


Only Fools

by ineffmoth



Series: Fools [1]
Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: A little angst, Action, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Corporate Espionage, Handsome Jack is an asshole, Humor, M/M, rhys is also an asshole
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-13
Updated: 2019-04-04
Packaged: 2019-11-16 13:59:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 46,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18095681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ineffmoth/pseuds/ineffmoth
Summary: In which Rhys attempts to steal one thing from Handsome Jack and finds himself with another.





	1. Chapter 1

Rhys arrived on Helios on Thursday morning. By Thursday afternoon, all remaining moral compunctions he may have had about corporate espionage were gone.

And Rhys wasn’t – he would say – a bad person. He did have moral compunctions. Maybe just a general lingering “stealing is bad; lying is wrong; sleeping with people for money is technically prostitution” sort of thing, but they were still there. Right up until the moment he actually met Handsome Jack.

“Hey there nerds, welcome to Helios,” Jack said to Rhys and his boss, a look of pure condescension on his masked, slightly two-toned face. “Nope,” he said to Rhys’ boss’ extended hand. “I can see your pit stains from here. Not touching that. Try to keep at minimum a four-foot distance from me at all times because if I catch a whiff of B.O., I’m gonna lose it and airlock you without really thinking about it first.” He laughed. It was an obnoxious laugh. “You, on the other hand,” he said to Rhys with an eyebrow waggle, “can get those long legs as close to me as you like.”

 _Yep_ , Rhys thought with sudden clarity. _I do not feel bad at all about robbing this guy blind._

He also knew with almost as much clarity and almost as much speed that basically everything he’d been told about Handsome Jack in preparation for this moment had been wrong.

Rhys wasn’t a professional at this sort of thing – seducing people, stealing corporate secrets, lying in general. He was only a low-level programmer at Tediore, actually. People sometimes got excited about that and asked him how the guns exploded, but the truth was he’d never even touched a gun before let alone worked on one. Mostly he did server maintenance and kept the company’s internal mail program running. When they heard that, people got bored.

Rhys had gotten bored, too. That was the problem.

 _I’m bored_ , he’d thought one day, in another one of those moments of sudden clarity.

And then, having thought it once, it was all he could think about. He could see the rest of his life stretching out before him, exactly the same. There he would remain in his little cubicle with his ancient computer and his Beaches of Eden-5 wall calendar and his plastic pen holder filled with paperclips and lint and loose change and his soul would slowly seep out of his ears and his body would whither into nothingness and he would die sitting just like that in his ergonomically designed office chair having spent his entire life doing nothing except click a mouse and sometimes write passive aggressive memos about not using the work email to sign up for porn sites.

In the ensuing panic that came with this vision, Rhys did something – in true Rhys style – incredibly stupid. He hacked Tediore’s top secret R&D files.

To be honest he didn’t really have a plan for that one. It just sort of seemed like the thing to do. Maybe he wanted to read something interesting for an hour. Maybe he wanted to stop seeing the disappointed look on people’s faces when he said he didn’t know how the guns exploded. Maybe a small part of him was hoping to get caught, hoping to get in trouble, hoping for something in his dull life to change, if not for the better then at least for the more compelling.

 _It’s not like anyone will actually catch me_ , Rhys had thought.

“Hey Rhys, thought I’d pop by and remind you that it’s Hank’s birthday today so there’s cake and ice cream in the breakroom,” his coworker Janice said, suddenly appearing behind him. “Whoa, what was that? What are you looking at? Were those R&D files? Rhys, why are you looking at R&D files? Well, if you had a good reason, then why did you close the tab?” Janice cupped her hands to her face and shouted clear across the office, “Boss, is Rhys cleared to look at R&D files because that’s totally what he’s doing!”

Not Rhys’ proudest moment. Also, fuck you, Janice.

Rhys had really expected to be fired and arrested for that little stunt. Instead, two beefy security guards had escorted – dragged – him up to the vice president’s office where he had been interrogated for nearly two hours.

Was he a spy? No. Was he a spy for Maliwan? No. Was he a spy for Torgue? No. Was he a spy for –? No, he wasn’t a spy for anyone. Then why had he hacked R&D?

“I dunno,” Rhys said with a shrug. “I was bored. Sorry.”

The vice president hadn’t looked impressed or convinced. He’d looked frustrated and suspicious and heavily armed. Rhys had started to think “arrest” had been an optimistic assessment of his future prospects. Then the CEO had arrived with a thick file containing Rhys’ entire life under one arm and a shredder under the other.

“This is a visual metaphor,” she said, plunking the shredder onto the desk in front of Rhys, “for what will happen if you don’t cooperate with us.”

Then she shredded the file.

It was a pretty lame threat, but Rhys was a coward.  (And there’s really no shame in admitting that! It’s good to know your weaknesses.)

In the end, Tediore decided that if Rhys wasn’t a spy, he could be useful, and if he was a spy, then he hadn’t found out much anyway so they could probably risk outsourcing his execution. All he had to do to save his own skin was use those apparently adept hacking skills to steal some worthwhile information from Handsome Jack, CEO of Hyperion. No matter how that played out, Tediore won. It was only Rhys who stood to lose. (Or, the CEO offered, like a belated carrot to a dying mule, to really seriously gain a lot of money.)

According to them, Handsome Jack was an asshole and an egoist with a taste for attractive morons. According to them, all he had to do was bat his lashes, flatter and fawn, spread his legs, and then hack Jack’s ECHO or personal computer while he was enjoying the afterglow.

Now, standing in front of Handsome Jack, Rhys knew that they’d been wrong. He knew it the way he’d known that he was going to die of boredom at Tediore. It was instinct. It was a vision. It was a goddamn fact. He could bat his eyelashes and get the fucking of his life but that was all he’d get. Handsome Jack would never trust him, would certainly never leave him alone with an ECHO, and he’d never get a second chance. And then his life would be fucked.

 _I’ve got a better idea_ , Rhys thought as both his moral compunctions and carefully planned script went skipping hand in hand toward the nearest airlock.

Jack waggled his eyebrows.

Rhys scoffed, rolled his eyes, and made a show of yawning.

At that, Jack’s smile, which had been lascivious and smug, sharpened into something a little more honest and a lot more dangerous.

“And what is your name, sweetheart?” he asked, inserting himself into Rhys’ personal space.

“I’m,” Rhys said, refusing to be cowed, “just here for the college credits.”

“This is my assistant, Rhys,” Rhys’ boss said tersely. “He’s a grad student at Eden-4 University studying –”

“Astrozoology,” Rhys finished for him.

That was Rhys’ cover. His “boss” was Dr. Headland, a real scientist who was being contracted by Hyperion to provide insight into the aggressive mutation varkids underwent when threatened. Dr. Headland had also been contracted by Tediore to pretend that Rhys was a capable assistant. He was looking a little nervous.

“’S that so?” Jack asked. “You into biology, then?” The way he drew out ‘biology’ was not remotely subtle.

“Why?” Rhys asked. “Is your dick a tentacle? Because that’s the only reason I’d be interested in seeing it.”

“Who said anything about seeing?” Jack asked.

“I did,” Rhys said. “The thing I said was ‘no.’”

“Huh,” Jack said, taking a step back.

Dr. Headland cleared his throat.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jack complained. “Okay, here’s the deal, normally I wouldn’t bother with you lowly scientists, but we’ve got a bit of a situation.”

He turned and started leading them out of the shuttle bay, toward R&D. Dr. Headland glared at Rhys. Rhys pretended to be really fascinated by the empty void of space out the window to his right.

As they walked, Handsome Jack explained what the “bit of a situation” was. Apparently, some of the Helios scientists had thought it might be cool to try injecting varkid DNA into something else just to see what happened. The thing they had decided to try this on was a human being. The good news was that it had worked! Hooray, science! The bad news was that they now had a virtually unstoppable mutated superhuman trapped in one of the labs and it had killed about a dozen people.

It sounded more like a “huge fucking problem” type of deal to Rhys, but Dr. Headland was merely nodding his head along, as if this sort of thing was normal.

“Ideally,” Jack said as they entered R&D with a swipe of his ID badge, “we’d like to find a way to stabilize this thing for use in combat. But for now, if you could just figure out a way to reverse it or knock it out, that’d be neat, too.”

They stepped into a lab filled with flashing computers and scientists in lab coats. Most of them were focused on a glass partition and what was on the other side. To call it a human still probably would’ve been kind. Certainly, it had once been human-shaped, but only in the same way a puddle of water could be said to have once been ice cube-shaped. It had bulging muscles and a warped, half-melted torso and it looked like parts of its ribcage had burst out of its back. Its face was covered in blinking bug eyes and it had a huge gaping mouth filled with hundreds of flat human teeth.

As they watched, it threw itself against the partition, howling and spitting some kind of green substance that sizzled and evaporated. Rhys flinched away from the impact involuntarily. Neither Jack nor Dr. Headland seemed particularly bothered.

“This is gonna be so awesome when it stops trying to eat people,” Jack said wistfully. “Well, my people.” He clapped his hands together and turned to Dr. Headland and Rhys. “So. Thoughts?”

Rhys had a number of them. For one, ‘might be cool’ didn’t seem like a great basis for human experimentation. For another, whhhhhat the actual fuck? He kept both of these politely to himself.

“I’ll need to see what it was they put in him, first,” Dr. Headland began. “Also, I’d like to speak with the lead scientist here.”

“That’d be me,” a short woman with frizzy brown hair said from close by. “Dr. Pamela Jane. It’s an honor to be working with you, Dr. Headland.”

They shook hands and began talking about numbers and dosages and readouts and a long list of things that Rhys didn’t bother trying to seem interested in or even to understand. Instead, he stared at the varkid-human thing. It paced around the enclosure, twitching and occasionally spitting more acid saliva.

Rhys jumped again as a hand clapped down on his shoulder. At some point, Jack had slunk over.

“Nature sure is beautiful, don’t you think?” Jack asked.

“And which lab is that contained in?” Rhys asked dryly.

“You’re a regular comedian, aren’t you?” Jack said. He patted Rhys once and stepped away. “Don’t have too much fun down here. And if that thing breaks free, try to use Dr. Moist over there as a meat shield. It’d suck if that pretty face of yours got gnawed off.”

“Yeah, I’ll keep that in mind,” Rhys muttered, watching him go.

 _What a jerk_ , he thought.

Dr. Headland made an impatient motion waving Rhys over. Rhys sighed and rolled his shoulders and tried not to think too hard about what other abominations might be down in R&D, ready to burst free and murder them all at a moment’s notice.

At least he was no longer bored.

*

Rhys spent the following days holed up in the lab with Dr. Headland, the Hyperion scientists, and the Beast. Mostly he took notes on what was being said and fetched supplies when they were asked for. No one bothered to ask for his input, which was a relief.

Handsome Jack did not appear again.

Dr. Headland had taken to shooting Rhys pointed looks whenever he found the opportunity, and Rhys could only shrug in return. What was he supposed to do? Go up to Jack’s office and throw himself across the man’s desk?

Apparently so, because on the fifth day Dr. Headland shoved a file at Rhys and told him to go up there.

“Handsome Jack has asked for regular updates on the project,” Dr. Headland said. “Give him this and let him know that we’re still working on a solution. It’s going to be a while since we only just managed to safely retrieve a new blood sample.”

Rhys glanced over at the containment cell, which had the added addition of one (1) new corpse and a large pile of dismembered loader bots.

“Try to say it very nicely,” Dr. Headland advised. “Because he might be mad about that.”

“…Sure,” Rhys said. “There’s no email here?”

“Rhys,” Dr. Headland said dangerously. “Don’t fuck this up.”

“Right,” Rhys said, taking the folder. “Be back soon. Maybe.”

He turned and headed up to Jack’s office.

When the receptionist let him in, Jack was sitting at his desk, a series of holo-screens pulled up in front of him. He seemed deeply absorbed in what he was doing, so Rhys took the chance to look around the massive, dark room. It felt like it had been purposely designed to intimidate and impress. Despite himself, Rhys found that he liked the cool, sleek elegance of it, especially with Elpis looming through the window. It felt like a room where anything could be done.

“Excuse me, sir,” Rhys said as he mounted the steps. “I brought a progress update from R&D on the varkid situation.”

Jack glanced up through the screens and dismissed them with a flick of his wrist. “Finally,” he groused. “What have you got?”

Rhys silently handed him the file.

Jack opened it up and began reading. He flipped to the next page, looking agitated. Then he flipped to the next. Soon, he was only skimming, roughly tossing through the file’s contents before finally dropping it onto his desk in disgust.

“So you have nothing,” he surmised.

Rhys, who had skimmed the file in the elevator, scratched his nose nervously, then nodded.

“Your boss must really hate you, kiddo,” Jack said, “to send you up here with that load of garbage.”

“I think he was probably hoping I would suck your dick or something,” Rhys admitted. “Which puts me in a tricky position. Because if you kill me, I’ll be dead. But if you don’t kill me, everyone will think I sucked your dick.”

“Huh,” Jack said. Then he pushed his chair back, spread his legs a little further, and said, “Well, if that’s what people are going to think anyway.”

“So you aren’t going to kill me,” Rhys said, ignoring the invitation. “That’s nice.”

Jack eyed Rhys seriously. The small hairs on the back of Rhys’ neck stood on end.

“Okay, pretty boy,” Jack said after a moment. “It’s time to see if your good genes were all wasted on the exo, ‘cause I have a pop quiz for you. If you were me – which is a totally impossible fantasy, I know, but let’s pretend real hard for a second here – if you were me and you had an unstoppable killing machine and your wimpy little scientists couldn’t get close enough to find out what color underwear it was wearing let alone what was in its friggin’ blood, what would you do?”

“Uh, vent it into space,” Rhys said.

Jack groaned and threw a hand over his eyes. “You’re killing me here, pumpkin. Just disappointment all around from you today.”

“No, listen,” Rhys argued. “So the formula they’ve recreated, when they use it on new subjects it triggers exponential mutation. At first, they become similarly durable and caustic, mindlessly killing everything in their paths –”

“But then ten minutes later they experience rapid cell degradation and, _thhhp_ , melt,” Jack interrupted. “Yeah, I know. Page five. I did read the thing.”

“Congratulations,” Rhys said sarcastically. “It’s a bioweapon.”

The hand dropped from Jack’s face. He gave Rhys a narrow-eyed, thoughtful look.

“Huh,” he said.

“Yeah, ‘huh,’ idiot,” Rhys said, then blanched and bit the inside of his cheek. That had probably been one step too far. “Uh, sorry, sir, I didn’t mean –”

Jack burst out laughing.

“Have dinner with me,” he said.

“Huh?” Rhys said dumbly.

“Now who sounds like an idiot, idiot,” Jack said. He stood up and rounded the desk, cocking one hip against it about a foot from Rhys. “You. Me. The nicest restaurant on this station. A bottle of wine so expensive it could pay off all your student debt. I’m trying to use small words, here.”

Rhys thought about it. He wondered if this would be giving in too easily. He wondered if this was strategically sound.

“Just dinner?” he clarified.

Jack smirked. “Let’s not put unnecessary limits on potential.”

“ _Just_ dinner,” Rhys said firmly, one finger raised.

“Whatever you say,” Jack agreed easily.

Rhys squinted at him suspiciously. Finally, he said, “I have a lot of student debt,” which was actually, sadly, true.

“I have a lot of money,” Jack said. “Tonight. Seven o’clock. I’ll ping your ECHO with the deets.”

“And what should I tell Dr. Headland? About the varkid thing?”

“Oh, that,” Jack said, waving his hand dismissively. “Vent it into space. We can always pull it back in and dissect it, I guess. Or,” he snapped his fingers as though he’d had a sudden thought, “have it stuffed and mounted, then put it in the Executive Suite so that next time a representative from Maliwan comes by I can scare the bejeebies out of ‘em. Ha ha, oh, man, that’s perfect. I’m gonna put a little camera in its mouth so I can capture the looks on their faces in crystal clear HD.” He moved quickly back around to his chair and began typing as he sank into it. “Yeah, don’t worry about it. I’ll send a memo down in a little bit.”

“Sure, thanks,” Rhys said. He waited a beat, then said, “If that’s all, Dr. Headland will want to know it’s safe to crawl out from under his desk.”

“Slow your roll there, sweetheart,” Jack said, looking up from his monitor again. “You still have one little problem: What are you gonna say to all the people who think you sucked my dick?” He made a sweeping gesture toward his crotch. He seemed dangerously close to waggling his eyebrows again.

“I’m sure I’ll think of something suitably unflattering,” Rhys said flatly. “Goodbye, Handsome Jack.”

“Yeah, we’ll see how unflattered you feel,” Jack said as Rhys turned and began to walk away. As Rhys reached the door, he called, “I can be patient as hell, sweetheart! See you at seven!”

Rhys had to bite the insides of his cheeks to keep himself from smiling. The eyeroll he couldn’t quite contain.

Back down in the lab, Dr. Headland gave him a quick once over and raised an eyebrow in question.

“It’s fine,” Rhys said with a one-shouldered shrug. “He’s sending a memo.”

A second eyebrow joined the first and Dr. Headland examined him again, slower this time. He made a noise of acknowledgement, perhaps even one of begrudging respect, and then turned back to his microscope. Rhys hovered, wondering if he should mention that he was wasting his time, and then decided that he’d had enough of delivering bad news for one day. And Dr. Headland tended to spit when he yelled.

Instead, Rhys decided to go take his lunch break and think about what, exactly, he was going to wear to dinner.

*

The restaurant Jack told Rhys to meet him at was _La Fine,_ located at the very bottom of Helios’ eastern (Pandora-wise) pillar. The dining area was set in a room made completely of glass so that the diners appeared to hang suspended over open space, with Pandora’s huge, glowing face curving softly to one side. Rhys looked at pictures of the interior on the ECHOnet and thought it would have been beautiful if it hadn’t been so terrifying. It was a feeling he was coming to associate with Helios in general.

He arrived right at seven, but Jack wasn’t there yet, so he leaned up against a wall across from the entrance to wait. The hostess glowered at him silently from her position just inside the door, either because he was loitering or because he was severely underdressed.

In the end, Rhys had decided that he didn’t need to worry about formality. He found it hard to imagine Jack arriving in black-tie anywhere. The idea of being so mismatched with him was infinitely more embarrassing than breaking a restaurant’s dress code, so Rhys had picked an outfit based solely on how good he looked in it. Rhys looked good in most things. In the long-sleeved black v-neck he’d chosen, he looked spectacular.

“You don’t even need cleavage,” a former girlfriend had once complained. “All you have to do is peek those collarbones and your tattoos and everyone in the room is looking at your chest. How am I supposed to compete?”

Compete for _what_ , Rhys had wondered. (And the less said about that relationship, the better – for everyone.)

He scrolled idly on his ECHO as the minutes passed, ignoring the ebb and flow of Hyperion employees in gowns and suits and sparkling diamonds that occasionally swept past in favor of his new favorite past time – consuming others’ petty drama. On his second day on Helios, one of the Hyperion lab assistants had approached him and invited him to join the lab assistants’ group chat on the Helios social media site. Rhys hadn’t bothered to even finish filling in his profile but had found the chat immensely amusing to silently observe.

Mostly, the lab assistants complained about Dr. Jane (and now Dr. Headland, who they – having overheard Jack – had taken to calling Dr. Moist) and worried about which one of them would be sent into an enclosure next. They played fast and loose with clearance, which was great for Rhys, and expended a great deal of time and energy writing out long, passive aggressive posts that, while never naming names, clearly vilified specific individuals for things such as neglecting to refill the hot water pot in the break room. (“AGAIN?? AGAIN?? I thought we had moved PAST this, people! And now: THREE TIMES in ONE WEEK. Honestly how some of you got DEGREES from SUPPOSEDLY respected institutions is BEYOND me.”)

Rhys was scrolling slowly through one such long tirade – about sycophantic brown-nosers trying to get an undeserved in with Dr. Jane through unsubtle, low class bribery, apparently – when someone clearing their throat drew Rhys’ attention. He looked up to see a Hyperion security officer standing in front of him.

“Excuse me, sir, I’ll need to see your ID badge,” she said.

Rhys looked past her to where the hostess was blatantly watching and gave her a deadpan stare. The hostess quickly looked away. Rhys sighed in exasperation but pulled his temporary ID from where it was clipped to the inside of his pants pocket. The security officer took it and scanned it with an ECHO.

“And what brings you down to level zero on a limited contractor’s pass tonight, sir?” the security officer asked, clearly intending to imply that this was not something one should do.

“Dinner,” Rhys said.

“At _La Fine_ ,” she clarified.

“Yep,” Rhys said, popping the p.

“You have a reservation?”

“Nope,” Rhys said, with identical emphasis.

“Uh-huh.”

Rhys glanced at his inside wrist, which projected a thin blue digital clock. 7:18. He wondered what would happen if he got arrested. Actually, he thought, it might be kind of funny to see Jack so thoroughly thwarted by his own security. Rhys weighed the pros and cons of the potential entertainment value of this interaction versus the loss of an extremely expensive dinner paid for by someone else. Glancing once more at the hostess, spite ultimately won out.

“I’m waiting for Handsome Jack,” Rhys said, straightening up out of his casual lean.

“Uh-huh,” the security officer said again.

Okay, he probably should have seen that disbelief coming.

“Just kidding,” he said. “I’m waiting for, uh…” He ran through his mental catalogue of Hyperion’s upper echelons for someone he could namedrop. “Jeffrey Blake,” he blurted, and then fought to conceal a wince. Mr. Blake had mainly stuck in his memory from Tediore’s file on Hyperion due to his sheer creep factor.

“Gosh, I hope not, because that would make this pretty awkward,” Jack said from where he had suddenly appeared at the security officer’s shoulder.

Both Rhys and the officer jumped, the latter taking two stumbling steps away and to the side.

“I wasn’t actually lying,” Rhys said apologetically to her. “Uh, the first time, I mean.”

She cleared her throat and handed Rhys’ ID back to him.

“Sorry for the inconvenience, sir,” she said, sounding strained. “Please enjoy your dinner.” She looked askance toward Jack and acknowledged him with a nod and, “Sir,” before turning and stiffly striding away.

“You causing a scene, kitten?” Jack asked. “Ditching me for my underlings and breaking the law? I think she was about ready to clap you in irons and send you off to the Friendship Gulag.”

Rhys turned to look at Jack, one eyebrow raised. As predicted, Jack had not gone for _La Fine’s_ mandatory black-tie look. In fact, he hadn’t changed at all, still wearing the same jeans and sneakers Rhys had seen him in earlier that day.

“If I am, it’s only because you left me with too much free time,” Rhys said. “I get in trouble when I’m bored.”

“I bet,” Jack grinned. “C’mon, you little delinquent, I’m friggin’ starving. And try to resist the urge to pocket the silverware, why don’t you?”

“Keep me entertained and I won’t have to,” Rhys said.

“Nah, I kinda want to see how many forks you can fit in those tight-ass pants of yours.”

Rhys rolled his eyes and followed Jack into _La Fine_. He was pleased to see the pale, drawn look on the hostess’ face. He smiled broadly at her and her lips pursed until she looked like she’d eaten a lemon.

“Welcome to _La Fine_ ,” she said, forcing on a professional smile. “Please wait a moment while I have a table prepared for you, sir.”

“Yeah, you do that,” Jack said dismissively, and turned fully toward Rhys. “So, pumpkin, what was the fallout down in the labs this afternoon like? Having to put down the family pet always tugs at the heartstrings, I know.”

“You really want to talk business?” Rhys asked.

“Not business, just the emotional upheavals of your colleagues,” Jack corrected. “Sooooo who cried, who yelled, did anyone throw a chair through a window? Oh, man, I love that shit. People never lose it around me unless they think I’m about to kill ‘em anymore. Really takes all the fun out of fostering a stressful workplace environment.”

“I think they make soap operas for that,” Rhys said dryly. When Jack impatiently gestured at him, Rhys added, “Most people were relieved? Except Dr. Headland and Dr. Jane, because neither of them is expendable enough to be threatened by the chance they might have to try to touch it at some point. I thought Dr. Headland might yell but he just shut himself up in one of the labs and told me not to disturb him. But Dr. Jane called a conference with everyone else and spent an hour and a half lecturing us on all our failings as scientists and human beings in painful detail. One girl was definitely crying.”

“Yeah? And what’d the doc have to say about you?”

“That clearly my fellatio skills were stronger than my grasp on the scientific method and that she hoped for my sake that I took this as an opportunity to see what happens to creatures ruled by base instinct but that if I didn’t learn my lesson she wouldn’t weep too terribly when my pale, frozen corpse floated past her apartment window. But in a lot more words than that.”

Jack whistled. “Wow,” he said. “Academia is harsher than I remembered.”

Rhys, who had worked in the corporate world for two years and had heard much worse, merely shrugged. He’d kind of been impressed, honestly. At the end, in the long, awful silence that followed Dr. Jane’s – there was no other way to say it – verbal rampage and subsequent door-slamming exit, he’d actually started to clap. That had ended pretty quickly when everyone in the room turned to glare at him.

“Sorry,” he’d said, clearing his throat and rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. “Knee-jerk reaction. Totally reflexive.”

“Your table is ready,” the hostess announced. “Right this way, please.”

They were led to a secluded corner table that was surrounded by glass on nearly all sides. Rhys looked down past his feet and fought back a wave of dizziness at the vast emptiness that stretched infinitely beneath him.

 _You could fall forever,_ he thought.

Realistically he knew that wasn’t true. If the glass broke right now and sucked the whole restaurant out into space, they’d just be trapped in orbit around Helios for eternity. There was actually something a little comforting in that thought.

As they settled in their seats and Jack ordered a bottle of wine without glancing at the wine list, Rhys felt his stomach knot into a different non-empty-void-of-space-related nervousness. This, this was the part Rhys had kind of been dreading. The dinner conversation.

What did you talk about with Handsome Jack?

It was one thing to bat at each other like cats (and okay, more like a cat and a fully armed nuclear warhead holding a laser pointer), but what did you say to the guy who practically owned a galaxy? Did you discuss politics? God, Rhys hoped not. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d caught an ECHO newscast for long enough to hear much more than ‘Promethea Maintains Intergalactic Status as the Literal Worst.’

As it turned out, Rhys needn’t have worried. Jack was a one-man conversation, audience participation not required. And his favorite topic of conversation was not politics. It seemed, in fact, to be himself.

No sooner had the hostess handed them menus and left to get the wine than Jack launched into a long tangent about how everything good on Helios was Thanks to Handsome Jack.

“Man, when I first got here, Tassiter – he was the guy who had my job before I strangled him to death – had all these real crappy joints lined up to open,” he said. “You would not believe what that guy thought passed for cuisine. What an asshole. Yeah, sure, I killed him for purely selfish reasons, I’m man enough to admit that, but let’s be honest, I did everybody’s taste buds a favor. And their eyeballs, wow. Redoing everything in yellow cost me a fortune but it totally paid for itself just in the lack of eyestrain related workplace injuries, holy crap.”

Rhys took a silent sip of his ice water. He wasn’t sure Hyperion Yellow was that much less of an eyestrain than black and red had been.

“Speaking of eyestrains, you are so lucky you never had to see what the Hall of Wonders looked like,” Jack went on. “Forgetting for a second how god awful ugly those sons o’ bitches were, it was even worse looking at their flabby old faces on a shoddily slapped together holoscreen that flickered every ten seconds. I really don’t get what they had against statuary.” Jack paused only long enough to rip a chunk out of a breadstick with his teeth. “See, me,” he continued as he chewed, “I believe that if someone wants to gaze reverently up at a replica of my face, they should be able to keep on doing that even if the power goes out. I mean, if the power ever goes out on Helios, that’s pretty friggin’ bad, so they may as well have something nice to look at while they die.”

And so on and so forth.

Jack’s enthusiastic monologue went on, unbelievably, until the arrival of the first course – seared scallops imported from Aquator. Rhys was just beginning to wonder what the point of this dinner even was in the first place. Surely a whole dinner hadn’t been required for him to be talked at for an hour. And, further, it seemed as though anyone else on the station could have taken his place. Maybe he had overestimated the level of interest he had inspired in Handsome Jack.

Then Jack took a bite of his scallops, made a deep sound of appreciation, and said, “Christ, I haven’t had seafood this good since Persephone.”

Rhys perked up in genuine interest.

“You’ve been to Persephone?” he asked.

“Yeah, of course,” Jack said. “I used to work at the Hyperion branch office there before I, y’know, owned the whole friggin’ company.”

“In Klypso, right?” Rhys said eagerly, a wide smile blooming across his face. “I’m from Persephone. I grew up right outside of Klypso, in one of its suburbs. The Hyperion building’s the tallest skyscraper in the system. Back in grade school we used to take field trips up to its public observation deck.”

“No shit?” Jack huffed. “I used to go up there to smoke and try to pick up tourists.”

Rhys laughed.

“Did you see much of the planet while you were there?” Rhys asked. Then, before Jack could answer, “Oh! Did you ever get to go sun striding?”

“Nah, I was working like a dog back then,” Jack said. “I barely left the building for the whole five years before the Helios project took off. What’s sun striding?”

“Oh, man,” Rhys groaned. “I can’t believe you never even – so the lakes up in the mountains aren’t really filled with water, right, but this viscous liquid called hydropellisopsis, which is like, basically just thick water – totally useless to humans because it’s unpotable although I heard they’ve found it has preservation properties for – anyway, forget that, so one of the things it does is when it reaches exactly eighteen point something something degrees Celsius, it hardens. It’s completely bizarre, but, as it happens, in summer at like midday, that’s the average surface temperature of those lakes, which means the surface hardens, which means you can walk on it. Only, setting your feet on it will slightly change the temperature, just enough to alter its state back to liquid, so sun striding, that’s when you go running across the lake, going as fast as you can, trying to get as far across as possible before you fall through and have to like, half-crawl, half-swim back to shore, and meanwhile the fish that live in this stuff, the hydropellisopsis, they’re totally docile, but they grow to be _huge,_ literally the size of a skag, a big skag, and – what? What are you laughing at?”

Jack was grinning, his cheek propped against one fist, eyes intent on Rhys.

“Nothing, nothing,” he said. “You’re pretty cute when you ramble.”

Rhys felt his entire face flush red hot in an instant.

“Oh _ho,_ ” Jack said, grin turning sly. “Now _there’s_ a look.”

“Shut up,” Rhys mumbled. “It’s just, I haven’t been back in forever.”

“You miss it, huh?”

“Some things more than others,” Rhys shrugged. He smiled a little sadly. “I think I miss being a kid, more than anything else. Running around, doing whatever I wanted. But what about you? Where is Handsome Jack from?”

“Pft,” Jack said. “That’s not interesting, trust me. I’d rather hear more about this wild childhood of yours. Please tell me you have a sealed record somewhere that I can go dig up later.”

The deflection was obvious and suspicious, but the redirect was still toward Rhys. He smiled, warmed.

“No, come on, look at me,” he said. “I was such a nerd. But I definitely got into trouble. Kid stuff. We had this neighborhood-wide conspiracy that this old dude squatting out in the junkyard was a serial killer. One time when I was like eleven someone dared me to sneak into his campsite and steal one of his ‘grizzly trophies.’ All I found were some porno mags. He chased me home with a shotgun and I didn’t leave my room for two whole days.”

“Geeze, that’s so innocent,” Jack said. “I’d forgotten how clean Persephone is. It was such a culture shock going from the Hyperion campus on Eden-2 to the one in Klypso, let me tell you. No one ever came to work and straight up murdered somebody and they acted all superior about it, but people were bullied into jumping off the top of that building all the time. We used to call the roof access the retirement plan. Passive-aggressive as hell.”

“Then you can imagine what going to high school there was like,” Rhys said. “’Course we were teenagers, so all that pent-up rage had to go somewhere. Prom night was infamous for turning into a full-on brawl. People showed up drunk and let it alllllllll out. My class’s prom queen got up to accept her crown with a twenty-slide presentation prepared on why every one of her friends was a backstabbing bitch. I think she’s a public prosecutor now.”

The conversation – and now it was, actually, a conversation – continued on in that vein for a while, Rhys describing his childhood on Persephone and Jack interjecting with tangentially related anecdotes until suddenly they were swapping comparative stories about Eden-4 University (which Rhys actually had attended for his comp. sci. and business double majors) and Eden-2 University (where Jack had gone for both his undergrad and masters in engineering).

And Rhys desperately, desperately wanted to ask about that, because Handsome Jack had never struck him as an inventor or a, a tinkerer, and _yet._ But he also knew how dangerous a topic of conversation that was, that he couldn’t let on that he was actually competent with computers – either hardware or software – beyond the practical efficiency of understanding his own cybernetic arm and ECHOeye.

“I mean, I do all the maintenance myself,” Rhys said, flexing the finger joints and quickly running through the test signals that made the whole thing light up bright blue for a moment, “and I’ve dabbled in upgrades, but…”

Jack’s eyes gleamed with honest interest and he didn’t even ask what Rhys needed them for, only dove into a Brief History of Hyperion Prosthetics, which might have been boring, except that it was filled with murder and human experimentation and it was being told by Handsome Jack. Rhys thought Jack could probably make the back of a cereal box sound like a thriller.

Before Rhys knew it, their dinner plates were being cleared away and the hostess was taking their dessert order. There was a lull in the conversation and Rhys turned to look out the window, toward Pandora. He was looking specifically at that glowing purple scar that marked the place where Jack had touched the planet deep to its core, but he supposed that after so long it must all bleed together into an unremarkable whole, because Jack addressed it in the general.

“Looks pretty from up here, huh?” he asked. “All peaceful and shit. You ever been down there?”

“No,” Rhys said. “I’ve heard a lot of stories, though. Is it true about all the cannibalism?”

“Unfortunately,” Jack said. “And the incest. Eurgh. I guess your options are limited when a stranger might eat your face off, and not in a fun way.”

“What about everything else?”

“ _Everything_ else?”

“I mean.” Rhys shrugged. “Vaults and sirens. All the old Dahl and Atlas tech that’s just been abandoned down there. Bandit treasure. Eridian artifacts. Everything.”

Jack chuckled. “That’s the thing about Pandora, kiddo. You start digging in the dirt, you’re only gonna find one of two things: death, or power. Sometimes, if you’re really lucky, you get both.”

The dim glow of Pandora and the stars illuminated his face, the clasps of his mask throwing shadows across his skin. That same light caught in his eyes and was held there, like a coin flipping over and over again, spinning, spinning, never landing on heads or tails, and glimmering constantly with both the promise and the threat.

“You wanna hear a secret, Rhys?” Jack asked, a knife-like edge to his smile. “Something not a lot of people know?”

“Yeah,” Rhys breathed.

Jack leaned forward across the table.

“ _I friggin’ love it_.”

*

Jack didn’t leave a tip on the bill.

Rhys had a small moral dilemma about that one. It went like this:

 _Rhys, you cannot be attracted to a man who doesn’t respect service workers_ , a voice hissed in his head, sounding suspiciously like his mother. _There’s no recovering from a personality flaw like that._

 _So murder, war mongering, and tax evasion we can forgive_ , Rhys’ own voice thought back, _but we draw the line at not tipping? That seems a little…_

 _Oh god,_ a third Rhys chimed in, _I’m attracted to Handsome Jack. That’s not good. Let’s focus on that for a second._

As they passed the hostess on the way out, Rhys belatedly realized that it was her specifically that wouldn’t be receiving a tip. That was fine, then. Crisis of conscience averted.

 _You’re an asshole, Rhys_ , the first voice hissed, but it was mostly drowned out by what had become a humming, panicked litany of, _I’m attracted to Handsome Jack this is not part of the plan I am in so much fucking trouble oh my god what the hell do I do?_

Rhys tried valiantly to regain his cool as they headed toward the elevator, lagging one step behind Jack to buy some time to control himself. In the elevator, Jack hit the button for the top floor and lounged silently back against the wall beside the panel, watching Rhys.

“Dinner was nice,” Rhys said, pressing the button for his own floor, hyper aware of Jack’s eyes following the motion. “Thank you.”

Before he could draw his arm back, Jack had grabbed his wrist. Rhys blinked and froze, not even trying to pull away as Jack reached up with his free hand and brushed his fingertips over the exposed edges of Rhys’ blue tattoo. The skin he touched prickled, goosebumps rising starkly out of pale flesh, and Rhys shivered.

“Cool ink,” Jack said lowly, tracing one small curve with his index finger. “You got any more?”

“ _Just dinner_ ,” Rhys reminded him, sounding choked.

“Hmmm,” Jack said.

He released Rhys, but straightened up abruptly and backed him up against the opposite side of the elevator, bracketing him in with his arms. Rhys felt his face heat up and his eyes darted nervously over Jack’s shoulder, at anything other than Jack’s own steady, half-lidded gaze.

“You’re really gonna make me work for it, huh?” Jack asked quietly. “Maybe you just like stringing me along.”

“I do have some self-respect,” Rhys said. “And how do I know it’s not you who’s stringing me along?”

“Ah,” Jack said. He looked smug. “Worried I’ll get bored?”

Even though it was true, it was annoying that he’d thought it. “If you do, it’ll only be because you lack taste,” Rhys snapped.

“I haven’t even had a taste yet,” Jack said. “Let me have a taste, Rhys.” He leaned forward even further and nipped gently at Rhys’ jawline.

Rhys bit back a groan – it was probably bad that it was really hearing Jack say his name that did it for him – and placed a firm hand on Jack’s chest, pushing him away. The elevator dinged and came to a halt.

“This is where I get off,” he said.

Jack smiled widely, salaciously, and opened his mouth to speak.

“No, shut up,” Rhys said first. “You know what I mean.”

He ducked under Jack’s arm and stopped the doors as they slowly began to close again, slipping out into the empty hallway. He paused and turned to look back.

“Give me a call sometime, Handsome Jack,” he said. “We can do dinner again.”

“Just dinner?” Jack asked.

Rhys smirked. “Let’s not put unnecessary limits on potential.”

The look on Jack’s face as the elevator doors slid close once more was filled with intent.

Rhys stood and watched for a moment as a display above the elevator showed it rising up through Helios and away from him. Then he let out a shaky breath and walked hastily toward his temporary apartment. As he closed the door, he leaned back against it and let his head fall to meet the steel with a soft thump. He stared at the ceiling and felt the wash of panic flood over him at last.

Rhys would be a liar – a big, fat, ugly liar – if he said he hadn’t ever thought about having sex with Handsome Jack. Or, like, fantasized about it. Okay, come on, who hadn’t this side of Dionysus? But there was an extreme degree of difference between jerking it to some distant celebrity billionaire corporate god and knowing you were actually, in fact, going to get it on with the man.

And Rhys had been looking forward to that, in a disbelieving, _is that really going to happen?_ sort of way. Really, really looking forward to it, despite the whole life-threatening fucked up corporate espionage situation he was stuck in. Silver linings and all that. But even then, he hadn’t particularly liked Jack. He was a jerk. He was an egomaniac. He was…

Well, all of that was still true, but he was also.

Rhys fumbled for the right word. Maybe he’d had more to drink than he’d thought.

For a moment, he did nothing but stare blankly upward, and then he reached up to touch the spot on his chin where Jack had put his teeth on him. It felt warm. The bite hadn’t been hard enough to leave even a temporary mark, but now his skin was humming with the memory of it. It was like there was some tether hooked inside of him now, and the line had been drawn taut and every time his heart beat there was a _tug_ –

 _Magnetic_ , he settled on at last. _Consuming._

Handsome Jack was like a black hole.

Rhys was worried. He had every right to be. This was bad – he was getting sucked in. But there was another part of him that was rearing its head, quaking with the thrill, keening for the next moment, and the next. He wondered what would happen if he just let go and fell into that inescapable orbit. He wondered if it would really be so awful – to be crushed.

 _I won’t be crushed_ , he promised himself sternly.

But maybe it would be fine to be squeezed.

*

Rhys woke the next morning feeling uncharacteristically jaunty despite only having time for a few hours of sleep. He hummed to himself as he brewed coffee in the kitchenette and spent enough time preening in front of the bathroom mirror that even he began to feel a little vain.

Everything was going well. Soon he’d have the information for Tediore and he could rest easy, life no longer in danger from either this corporation or that. Even more, though, Handsome Jack liked him. Handsome Jack liked _him_ , Rhys. He thought he was attractive and interesting, and Rhys wasn’t even, well, he wasn’t pretending to be the idiot Tediore had told him to. He was just being Rhys.

To be wanted by the most powerful man in the universe, that was a hell of an ego boost.

His self-satisfied disposition only improved as he descended to R&D and remembered what was scheduled for the day – now that the final paperwork had been filed and the last experiments brought to a halt, they would be venting the varkid-human monster. It was going to be extremely nice to have one less violent threat to his life to worry about.

The mood in the lab as Rhys arrived, however, was tense. The lab assistants were all keeping their heads down, scurrying about with a bit more haste than was normal and carefully avoiding eye contact and small talk. Rhys traced their nerves to the area of the room they were all conspicuously avoiding. Dr. Jane was standing with her hands braced against her desk, shoulders hunched up around her ears. Rhys could practically see the storm cloud brewing over her head.

“She’s been like that since she got off the phone with Handsome Jack this morning,” Benson said quietly, noticing that Rhys had paused in the doorway.

Benson was the only lab assistant whose name Rhys could actually remember, and that was because he’d introduced himself by saying, “Benson, like a Bunsen burner, but, uh, not that, please don’t call me Bunsen, um,” causing Rhys to experience an uncomfortable level of secondhand embarrassment. Benson-not-Bunsen was also the one who’d invited Rhys to the group chat.

“What did Handsome Jack want?” Rhys asked, because as far as he knew the whole thing was a done deal.

“Oh, _she_ called _him_ ,” Benson clarified. “She had this whole long presentation planned out about why we should preserve the specimen for further study. She got about a sentence in before he laughed and hung up.”

Rhys’ eyebrows shot up into his hairline. That had been pretty ballsy of Dr. Jane.

“We’re still on for Operation: Slip it Under a Cup and Take it Outside, though, right?” Rhys asked.

“Ha, that’s funny, uh, slip it…because it’s…a bug…” Benson cleared his throat. “Yeah, as far as I know.”

“Rhys!” Dr. Headland shouted from across the room. “Get over here!”

Rhys shrugged apologetically to Benson and hurried over to Dr. Headland.

“What a nightmare,” Dr. Headland was muttering to himself as Rhys approached. “This whole thing has been a mess from start to finish. If you’re going to commit serious human rights violations for the sake of scientific discovery, you should at least have the guts to follow through with it all the way. Still, at least it’ll be over soon and I can get back to the work I was originally contracted for.” He glanced at Rhys. “I’m a serious astrozoologist, you know.” It sounded accusing.

“Of course,” Rhys said placidly.

Dr. Headland narrowed his eyes at him but said nothing, only shoved a clipboard into Rhys’ arms.

“Check on these samples and compile the data,” he ordered. “They’re all in cooler two.”

Normally Rhys was annoyed to be asked to go in any of the walk-in sample coolers, because they were freezing and the abrupt change from the heat of the lab to the cooler and back again made his skin chap and crack. Today he was more than happy to be out of the way of Dr. Jane’s vortex of negative energy.

The walk-in coolers were all sound-proofed, completely sealed rooms, carefully cut off from the outside world to preserve the integrity of the samples they contained. As he entered and shut the door, the low hum of noise from the lab was blocked out, and Rhys sighed in relief. He wondered how long he could milk being in here until it got too cold to stand. It was unlikely that anyone would notice he was gone.

The samples were kept on carefully labeled racks and some had been further separated from the others by being placed in containers. Rhys rubbed the light fog off the front of one of these and began dutifully copying down the numbers displayed digitally on the glass in soft green light.

As he worked, he idly replayed the previous night in his head. He’d put the ball in Jack’s court and he hoped that hadn’t been a mistake. There was potential for that to go badly. If he had to try to take the initiative back later, it would leave him at a disadvantage. But based on that last, lingering look on Jack’s face, he didn’t really think it would be a problem.

Rhys reached the end of the row of samples and straightened up. He checked the time on his wrist display and saw that a good ten minutes had passed. The venting would be soon. He didn’t want to miss the show.

He rubbed at one shoulder, trying to get the kinks out as he pushed open the door to the cooler, and then stopped short as he took in the scene in the lab before him.

One of the lab assistants – Anna? Amelia? – was standing wild-eyed in front of the enclosure, a remote control in one hand and a submachine gun in the other. Dr. Jane was standing pale-faced with her hands raised in front of her, Dr. Headland lying crumpled at her feet. A sluggish trail of blood dripped from his temple. The other lab assistants were huddled under desks and behind control panels, arms thrown over their heads in defense. Everyone in the room had turned to stare at Rhys.

“…I feel like I might have missed something,” Rhys said, slowly raising his hands.

“Enough is enough!” the lab assistant – Angelica?? – screamed, and pressed a button on the remote.

There was a click, followed by the sound of whirring machinery from inside the enclosure, and then the R&D alarms started to blare.

 _Thaaaaaaat’s not good_ , Rhys thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> take this from me so i'll stop fussing.
> 
> this was supposed to be a one shot etc. etc. i've tentatively set the chapters at 3 even though i think it might end up being 4. rating will likely up when i come to terms with the fact that i've written dick touching.
> 
> feedback of any kind is appreciated.


	2. Chapter 2

Rhys dove for the nearest cover and found himself squished behind a mini-fridge with Benson. There were loud voices from the rest of the lab, Dr. Jane’s chief among them, and then screams as the lab assistant – God, what was her _name?_ – fired a series of rounds into the ceiling.

“What the hell is happening, Benson?” Rhys hissed.

“Oh, uh, we all thought Amy –” Amy! That was it! “– was volunteering to work with the specimen to get Dr. Jane’s attention, you know, sucking up and –”

“Abridged version, please!”

“Amy was secretly dating the test subject before he was mutated and instead of letting us airlock it, she’s setting it loose!” Benson said quickly.

Rhys stared at him incredulously and then craned his neck around the side of the fridge to look at Amy. Her cheeks were flushed, her blonde hair frizzy and unkempt. The three-segment entrance to the containment cell was slowly hissing open, one door at a time, and she stood with her back to it, breathing heavily.

“If anybody moves, I’ll shoot!” she yelled. “Theodore isn’t a monster! The way he’s behaved, it’s because you’ve tortured him, kept him locked up and away from the people he cares about! Away from me! But once he’s free, you’ll all be forced to see what you’ve done to an innocent man. You’ll be forced to acknowledge that he’s still perfectly conscious and sane!”

“Is she serious?” Rhys hissed to Benson. “Is, is, is this really happening? Is everyone on Helios a fucking _lunatic_?”

Benson shrugged and nodded.

“We’ve gotta get out of here,” Rhys muttered, examining the rest of the lab.

The main exit was a set of double doors fully in Amy’s line of sight. There was also a side door tucked into one corner that led to an observation platform up above the enclosure, but it was on the opposite side of the room, and Rhys wanted further from the containment cell, not closer to it.

Suddenly one of the other scientists made a break for the main doors. Amy let out a cry of anger and fired at him. He screamed and crumpled, blood leaking from several holes in his back, and lay on the floor groaning in pain. Several other people shrieked, but nobody moved an inch.

“No one has to get hurt!” Amy yelled, which seemed to be a bit contradictory to her own actions, in Rhys’ opinion.

“Amy, please be reasonable,” Dr. Jane said evenly. “We can talk about this. Close the doors again and let’s have a calm discussion.”

“You already said there’s no point!” Amy said, shaking her head. “You said that giant moron Handsome Jack has already made his idiot mind up and doing anything else now will just make him come down here and throw his feces around like an inbred chimp!”

Dr. Jane glanced nervously around the room at their audience. “Well, I didn’t quite put it –”

“No, that’s exactly what you said!”

“Context is really –”

She stopped speaking abruptly as a horrible half-human howl came from the enclosure. The last of the doors had hissed open. The monster didn’t seem to register that it had an escape, merely lumbering slowly toward the sounds and movements in apparent curiosity. It extended one large hand with twisted, elongated claws, and gripped the edge of the entrance, hunching over to stare down the small corridor at them.

“Theodore…” Amy breathed, turning to look at it. “Theo…”

The dozens of swiveling eyes in its face shifted as one to focus on her. It blinked slowly, let out a low rumbling gurgle, and then lunged. People began screaming again, but they were all drowned out by Amy’s own agonized wail and the crunching of bones and flesh as the monster bit into her shoulder with its flat teeth.

Rhys felt his stomach turn and looked away, leaping to his feet to run. Everyone else seemed to be of the same mind, because there was a mad dash for the exit. Rhys started to follow, but was stopped in his tracks as Amy’s body was flung in front of him, landing with a sick splat at his feet. Her lifeless face was frozen in shock.

Rhys stumbled backward a step and bumped into Benson, who reached up to grip his arm.

Another howl drew Rhys’ attention from the body. He watched as the monster lunged again, this time toward Dr. Jane, who had darted forward to grab the gun Amy had dropped. From her position between Rhys, Benson, and the door, she fired into the monster’s torso, and green slime began to ooze down its chest from the bullet wounds. But the monster didn’t even falter in its movements. In a flash, its blood-stained mouth was around Dr. Jane’s arm, wrenching it out of its socket with a meaty tearing sound.

Rhys grabbed Benson and turned to go the other way.

 _Maybe we can barricade ourselves in the cooler_ , he thought desperately.

But he had turned just in time to see another of the scientists slam the door shut, locking himself inside. Rhys banged his fist on it. Through the small, fogged window, he could see the scientist shaking his head.

“Oh my god, oh my god,” Benson was whining, still clutching Rhys like a lifeline. “We’re gonna die. Oh my god.”

“Not helping!” Rhys hissed, and dragged him onward, toward the door to the observation platform.

He flung the door open and took the stairs two at a time, pulling Benson after him. The monster slammed into the doorway not far behind them, its uneven limbs disorienting it for a moment. It let out a guttural roar and began climbing up the stairs, legs stumbling and banging awkwardly as it adjusted to the new terrain.

At the top of the platform, Rhys punched his palm against the button that would open the moving portion of the enclosure’s ceiling that was used to drop food and supplies inside. A square in the glass yawned open and Rhys swung himself over the railing on top of the solid surface beside the hole.

“What are you doing?” Benson asked, even as he followed.

“We've gotta jump down and make for the exit,” Rhys said.

“We’ll break our legs if we jump down there!”

“That thing’s gonna break a lot more of us if we don’t!” Rhys pointed out. “Just land on your toes and roll; it’ll be fine, I promise!”

Benson looked over his shoulder at where the top of the monster’s hulking, bone-spiked back had appeared near the apex of the stairs. He swallowed and jumped through the hole, landing with a thud and rolling a few feet. Rhys followed immediately after. He let out a small wail as he flailed downward and smacked inelegantly to the ground, falling less into a roll and more into a faceplant.

“Oh, wow, I’m glad that worked,” Rhys groaned as he clambered to his feet. “It looked way easier on the ECHOnet.”

“You didn’t know what you were doing?” Benson asked shrilly.

Rhys didn’t bother responding – that much should’ve been obvious – instead latching onto Benson’s arm once more and moving into a full-bodied sprint toward the exit. They passed Dr. Jane’s prone form as they went. Miraculously, she was still alive. She reached out limply toward them with the arm that hadn’t been mangled and her mouth moved sluggishly, but whatever she was trying to say was inaudible with the alarms still screaming overhead.

Out in the hallway, it seemed like most of the lab assistants and scientists had scattered down one corridor or the other, but a group of them were clustered up against the elevator, jamming impotently at the buttons on the panel.

“It’s not responding!” one of them said.

Another had an ECHO pressed to her ear. She ran a hand through her hair and let out a groan of frustration. “All I’m getting is some pre-recorded message about a security block! No one’s picking up!”

Either jumping successfully through a hole was a problem limited only to Rhys or the monster had quickly mastered the challenge of descending stairs, because it burst into the hallway, tearing one of the double doors off its track as it went.

Everybody scattered, tripping over themselves and each other to make a break for it. Rhys and Benson booked it going right. With his long legs, Rhys was easily able to pull ahead of the rest of the crowd. He was surprised to see Benson keeping even with him, the ID card pinned to his lab coat flapping noisily against his chest as he ran.

“My mother – _huff_ – was – _huff_ – right,” Benson gasped between panted breaths. “I should’ve – _huff_ – stayed on – _huff_ – Hera!”

They came to another fork in the hallway and went right, then came to another and went left. Rhys slowed to a jog and glanced over his shoulder. There was no sign of any of their other colleagues and no monster. He strained his ears, but there was nothing but Benson’s heavy breathing and the alarms.

“Wait, let’s stop for a second,” Rhys said. He stumbled to a halt and leaned heavily against the wall.  “How do we get off this floor?”

“That elevator’s the only way,” Benson said, hunched over with his hands on his knees. “It’s a security measure to make sure no one gets into the restricted labs without clearance.”

Rhys cursed and brought up his ECHO display on his palm. He dialed the number for Hyperion security and was greeted by a blank screen with the company logo rotating slowly in the middle.

“Hello, valued Hyperion employee!” a cheery female voice intoned. “We here at Hyperion Security want you to know that your safety is important to us. Unfortunately, we are unable to accept your call at this time. Please try again as soon as the security block on your sector has been lifted. Good luck!”

“Oh, yeah, that’s really helpful,” Rhys said. “What’s the point of security if you can’t even – forget it.”

He pulled up his contacts list and selected ‘Handsome Jackass.’ The ECHO began to ring.

“Who are you calling?” Benson asked, sidling up beside Rhys.

“Handsome Jack,” Rhys said.

The ECHO continued to ring without response.

“Handsome…” Benson repeated faintly. “Why do you have –”

There was a loud bang that echoed through the corridors. It was impossible tell how close it had come from.

“C’mon, pick up, pick up, pick up, pick up,” Rhys said, shaking his hand as though it were a quarter stuck in a gumball machine.

There was a click, and Jack’s face appeared in his palm.

“Hey pumpkin, not that it’s not nice to hear from you, but last night I kinda got the impression you were one of those people who waits more than ten hours after the first date to call,” Jack said. He paused. “Do I hear alarms?”

“Date?” Benson said.

“Hi Jack, hope you’re not busy, remember that unkillable super-monster that was locked up down here in R&D?” Rhys asked in a totally normal tone that was not high-pitched or panicked at all. “Well the operative word in that sentence was ‘was.’ It ‘was’ locked up and now it’s not. Funny story, kind of long, if you could send some help, I would really appreciate that. Possibly to a carnal extent.”

“Carnal?” came Benson’s weak echo.

Jack’s expression had drawn taut. “Rhys, what –”

A hideous roar from not far down the hall cut Jack off.

“ _Okaythanksgottagobye_!” Rhys yelped and hung up, grabbing Benson by the arm and darting down another corridor.

“Did you just hang up on _Handsome Jack_?” Benson gasped.

“Yes, and if he wants to kill me about it later, he’ll have to save me first,” Rhys said. “It’s called strategy, Benson, try to keep up.”

Benson let out a strangled whine of terror, indicating that he didn’t find this line of reasoning to be particularly compelling.

They turned down a hallway with another set of double doors at the end and Rhys breathed a sigh of relief. He pulled out his ID card as they approached and swiped it over the card reader, only to receive an angry buzzing sound in response.

“Really, the labs are locked down, too?”

“No, I think our clearance just isn’t high enough,” Benson said, pointing to the large ‘TOP SECRET’ sign bolted overhead.

“Oh.”

“That one!” Benson said, pointing.

Rhys turned and saw a smaller door a few yards away. He swiped his ID card again and it unlocked.

“Perfect,” Rhys said. He opened the door and groaned. “It’s a supply closet.”

But Benson was already shoving him in and closing the door behind them. It was a small room, although it fit the two of them just fine, and the heavy smell of chemicals lingered in the stale, unventilated air. The walls were lined with large steel shelves covered in cleaning supplies and buckets of loose hardware. On the plus side, there was no alarm here, so that shrill sound was dulled into a distant throb.

For several long minutes, they just stood there, staring at the door, waiting to see what would happen. When nothing did and they could hear no footsteps or screaming or howling, Rhys let out a shaky breath and collapsed onto a stack of cardboard boxes filled with toilet paper.

“I guess now we just have to wait for someone to come rescue us,” he said.

“You think someone’s coming?” Benson asked. “They won’t just vent the whole floor?”

“Yeah, definitely, of course,” Rhys said. “Uh…they can’t do that, can they?”

Benson shrugged, which wasn’t reassuring.

“Maybe we should come up with a plan,” Rhys said. “One other than, ‘Hope It Doesn’t Learn to Open Doors.’”

There was a beeping sound and the supply closet door opened.

Benson screamed shrilly and Rhys leapt to his feet, grabbing a nearby mop as if it would be remotely useful as a weapon. But it wasn’t the monster standing in the doorway.

“Hey, pumpkin,” Handsome Jack said. “Hey, other guy I don’t know or care about.”

“ _Jack_?” Rhys said in disbelief. “What are you _doing_ here?”

“What do you mean, what am I doing here?” Jack asked. “You called me like five minutes ago begging me to come save you!”

“I wanted you to send some, I don’t know, loader bots or something!” Rhys said. “Or some of your soldiers! The people you pay to shoot guns at stuff!”

“Well, it’s your lucky day, kiddo!” Jack said, flinging his arms out. “You got something better – a gen-u-ine, boner fide hero!”

“It…it’s ‘bona fide,’ I think,” Benson corrected quietly. “Sir.”

“Yes, thanks, I know, obviously, I’m not an idiot, I was making a dick joke,” Jack said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Not really funny anymore since I had to explain it.”

Jack stepped into the closet and closed the door. Now it was starting to get a little cramped. He turned to Rhys again, mouth opened, and then shut it, one eyebrow raised.

“Nice mop,” he said. “Really gonna do a lot of damage with that one.”

Rhys blushed and dropped the offending object.

“Look, here’s the deal,” Jack said. “I was already on my way down when you called. You guys were about to launch that sucker into orbit and you think I was going to miss out on that? A big ol’ corrosive monster suffocating silently in the vacuum of space? All three hundred of its eyes popping like little acid-filled pinatas? C’mon, give me some credit.”

Benson looked like he was about to say something – probably about how eyes exploding in space was a myth – so Rhys quickly elbowed him in the side. The supply closet was going to become extremely cramped if it had a dead body in it.

“And normally I’d be totally down with letting my more expendable guys handle this one,” Jack went on, seemingly unaware. “You’re cute, but you’re not ‘unnecessarily risk my own life’ cute. Except it seems like someone’s bypassed the security protocols for the floor and cut off communication with the rest of Helios. I had to use the emergency override on the elevator to prevent it from dumping me right smack into Mr. Hyde’s loving, outstretched arms. The elevator stopped in the middle of the shaft – _ha_ – and wouldn’t start up again, so I climbed out and crawled through a friggin’ airduct to follow the trace back to the source of your call. That one’s probably not gonna make my ‘Top Ten Coolest Moments as Greatest Dude in the Universe’ list.”

Rhys looked at Benson, alarmed.

“Could Amy have done that?” he asked.

“I don’t know, I mean, it’s possible, I guess,” Benson stuttered out. “She was spending a lot of time with Dr. Jane before, well.” He cleared his throat. “She might’ve been able to lift her clearance codes or something.”

“Why would anyone have clearance to cut a whole floor of R&D off from the rest of the station?” Rhys asked.

“In case something breaks loose?” Benson offered, looking wildly between Jack and Rhys. “To minimize casualties? I don’t know!”

“Well, in that case, job well done!” Rhys said. “It’s working exactly as planned!”

“Sure is, and we’ve all learned a very valuable lesson about information security as a result,” Jack said. “And if there’s anyone left who hasn’t, they’re going to when I get my hands on them. Very slowly. With diagrams, for the visual learners in the class. Anyway, the important thing is, I can undo it – of course I can, even if it wasn’t my system, I’m a genius – but I have to be at the main security terminal.”

“Which is where?” Rhys asked. “Please say next door.”

“Yeaaaaaaaah,” Jack said. “It’s right across from the main lab. Just past the irradiated killing machine.”

“My life is a nightmare,” Rhys said, putting a hand over his eyes.

“There is a potential solution,” Jack said. “I’ve got a cloaking device on me.”

“Great!” Rhys said, perking up. “Why didn’t you say so! You can just slip past the monster and fix the security protocols!”

“And that _was_ my plan, but there’s just one teensy tiny detail I wanted clarification on first. ‘Swhy I came and found you instead of just, y’know, doing it. Varkids can see infrared. Can that thing?”

Rhys’ gut dropped.

Benson faltered for a moment, and then said, “Uh, preliminary testing was still pretty inconclusive on trait transference, but the subject’s historic responses to stimuli haven’t totally ruled out –”

“Let’s assume it can,” Rhys cut in, because his luck had a certain telling track record by now.

“That figures,” Jack said, seeming to be of the same mind. He clapped his hands together. “Okay, here’s the plan, you,” he pointed at Benson, “get to be bait.”

“What!” Benson squawked.

“No, hold on,” Rhys said quickly. “I mean, no, come on, really?”

Jack looked around in exasperation, hands on his hips. “Yes, really.”

“Forgetting how horrible that is for a second, it won’t even work,” Rhys tried. “That thing tore through Amy in like two seconds. Not much of a distraction.”

“Well obviously he’d have to lead it away from us first,” Jack said.

“Still seems risky,” Rhys said.

“What’s your idea, then, smart guy?” Jack asked sarcastically. “Arm ourselves with mops and clean it to death? Hope its skin is sensitive to gentle floor cleaner and it gets a rash?”

Rhys scowled. “Give me a second,” he said. He pulled up all the files he had on it onto his palm display and began scrolling through them. “It has to have a weakness, right? Nothing’s totally invincible. That would be crazy.”

“Yeah, it has a weakness for human flesh,” Jack said, waving a hand in Benson’s direction.

Benson looked pale and had started visibly shaking.

“Don’t look so bummed out,” Jack said to him. “You’d be sacrificing your life for the greater good! Namely, me!”

Unsurprisingly, this did not look like it had made Benson feel better.

“I just had a thought,” Rhys said, pausing his scrolling suddenly. “What would happen if we injected it with the new formula? The one that causes rapid cell degradation?”

Jack blinked. Both he and Rhys looked to Benson.

“Uh…it’d cause rapid cell degradation?” Benson said. “Most likely? I couldn’t say for sure, but…”

“Okay, here’s my idea,” Rhys said. “We use the air ducts to get to the lab with the formula in it. We grab the formula, load it into a tranquilizer gun, and we take the air ducts to the main lab. From there we head to the security terminal. If we don’t encounter the monster – great! If we do, we shoot it and wait for it to melt. Sticking untested genetic cocktails into stuff just to see what happens got us into this mess, and now it’s going to get us out.”

Jack looked unimpressed. “This idea is dumb. For the record.”

“Do you have anything better?” Rhys snapped. “Other than using a living human being as cannon fodder.”

“Nope, this is fine,” Jack said, raising his hands in defense. “We’ll do this. I just also think it’s incredibly stupid and I hope it doesn’t get us killed. Bait plan is still on the table. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Well,” Rhys said intelligently, “good. Let’s go, then. Wait, this is the first time anyone’s gone along with a plan I’ve suggested. Should we put our hands together or something?”

“Absolutely not,” Jack said.

Benson frantically shook his head no.

* 

The air duct Jack had come out of was located around the corner from the supply closet. They had a brief argument about what order they were going to crawl through it in, eventually ending with Benson – who knew the floor layout the best – at the front, Rhys behind him, and Jack at the end.

“So, today’s been pretty crappy so far,” Jack said as they inched along. “But I gotta say the view right now is starting to make up for it.”

Rhys valiantly resisted the urge to kick him in the face.

“I think we’re almost there,” Benson whispered.

He dragged himself forward a little further and peered through a metal grate on the side of the air duct.

“Sorry, no, this is lab seven,” he said. “I think we should’ve gone right instead of left back there.”

Jack groaned loudly.

“I thought you said you knew where you were going,” Rhys hissed.

“It all looks really different from in here!” Benson defended.

They backtracked slowly for a few minutes and took the other turn. At last they reached the vent in lab four, where the formula was being worked on, and Benson opened it up with a shove. There were several startled shrieks.

“It’s just us!” Benson said quickly. “No monsters! Please don’t shoot!”

He pulled himself out into the lab and Rhys followed after him. There was a small group of scientists huddled in the middle, a few of them holding weapons and all of them looking equal parts terrified and confused. These emotions seemed to compound as Jack crawled out after them, managing a much more elegant entry than either Benson or Rhys had.

“Nothing to see here, folks, just an incredibly handsome man emerging from an air duct,” Jack said, brushing the dust off his jacket. “Please feel free to go about your regularly scheduled cowering and never mention this to anyone. Ever. I mean that.”

The scientists all glanced at each other, but did lower their guns.

“We need the new bioweapon formula,” Rhys said. “And a tranquilizer gun if you have one.”

One of the scientists pointed toward a nearby cooler. “We have a tranq gun, too, but sedatives don’t have any effect on the specimen,” she said.

“I’m more than aware, trust me,” Rhys said, crossing to the cooler.

Inside were several rows filled with vials of liquid, all with the same six-number code printed on the side. He grabbed one and then thought better of it and grabbed a second one, too. Just in case. When he stood up again, the scientist had a tranq gun held out for him. Rhys accepted it, and then paused to look between it and the vials for a moment.

“How does this work, actually?” he asked.

“Here, let me,” Benson said, taking the items from him.

He opened up the magazine and pulled out the top two darts – slim glass syringe-like bullets with long, thick needles on the ends. Benson unscrewed the backs of the darts and poured the sedative inside into a trashcan. Then he carefully began pouring the formula in its place.

In the meantime, Jack had gone to the gun locker the scientists had ransacked their weapons from and was rifling through it.

“If we’re confronting this thing,” he said, “and giving it a ten-minute window to tear us limb from limb, we’re going to need some heavier firepower.”

“Bullets don’t really work on it,” Rhys said. “Dr. Jane shot it a whole bunch of times and it didn’t even blink.”

“Yeah, mostly this will just make me feel better,” Jack said. “Master of my own fate and all that jazz. Plus, maybe if we hit it hard enough it’ll slow down.”

“I doubt there’s a rocket launcher in there,” Rhys said.

“No, but – yep, heeeere we go,” Jack said, grabbing a large laser gun. “I haven’t held one of these bad boys in ages. We stopped producing ‘em when e-tech took off – way more effective and significantly less expensive. Wow, this really takes me back. Good memories. Well, bad memories, actually. But y’know.” He hefted it over one shoulder and picked up a small shock repeater, waving it in Rhys’ direction. “Here, I’m guessing this is more your speed.”

“Why are you giving this to me?” Rhys asked, awkwardly taking it with the tips of his fingers like it might leap out of his hands and bite him.

“Uh, so you can shoot it?”

“I don’t know how,” Rhys said. “I’ve never held a gun before.”

“For the love of –” Jack sighed. “It’s never too late in life to pick up a new skill, I guess. Just take off the safety, point it at anything that looks like it wants to kill you, and pull the trigger. Easy-peasy.”

“Um…”

“You do know where the trigger is, right?”

“Yes!” Rhys said. “…What’s the safety?”

“It’s the switch on the side of the grip, up by the trigger,” Benson said helpfully.

Rhys examined the grip for a moment before he found the mechanism. He flipped it forward and raised the gun.

“Not at me!” Jack said, reaching out to push Rhys’ arm down.

“Oops, sorry.”

“Here,” Benson said, holding out the tranq gun.

Rhys took it and then immediately turned and handed it to Jack. “You’re definitely the better shot,” he said. “There’s two in there, so you get to miss once, but only once.”

“Pft,” Jack said. “Babe, I’ve never misfired in my life. And I mean that in every way.” He tucked the tranq gun into his waistband. “Alright, we may as well get this shitshow on the road.”

“It doesn’t really seem like you need my help anymore,” Benson said, “so I think I’ll just stay here and cower with everyone else.”

“Not so fast,” Jack said, clamping a hand down on Benson’s shoulder. “We’re going with Rhys’ plan for now, but don’t think for a second I’ve forgotten about using you as bait. If this goes to hell, I want someone unimportant there to absorb the fallout. You’re sticking with us.”

Benson visibly deflated. “Yes, sir.”

They all climbed back up into the air duct, Rhys offering a belated “thanks” to the scientist who had helped them as he went. The group of lab coats watched their exit silently, probably not sure what to make of what had just happened.

The journey toward the main lab was much slower because the guns clanked noisily against the metal walls, forcing them to stop every so often to listen tensely for any sign that they’d drawn the monster’s attention.

“If that thing goes off and fries me,” Rhys said when the laser gun on Jack’s back banged against the ceiling particularly loudly, “the chances of you getting your dick sucked drop to zero.”

“That’s what the safety’s for, babe,” Jack said.

Rhys paused and tried to unobtrusively flip the safety on the repeater back on. Judging by Jack’s quiet snicker, he wasn’t entirely successful.

Eventually they made their way to the main lab again. There were no awaiting shrieks this time, only the gruesome scene they had abandoned. Dr. Headland was still passed out on the floor and the conjoined pool of blood from the bodies of Amy and the scientist she had shot had grown so large that it was difficult to navigate the room without stepping in it. Jack paid no mind, walking right through it to crouch in front of Dr. Jane.

She had managed to crawl up against one of the desks and was weakly holding a makeshift compress to the gaping wound in her dislocated arm. Her breathing was shallow and her skin had gone clammy with blood loss.

Jack examined her for a minute and then said, “If you live through this, you and I are gonna have to have a chat.”

Dr. Jane actually laughed a little. She didn’t seem capable of speech, but she did give a small nod of acceptance.

Jack stood up again and headed toward the hallway, pulling the tranq gun as he went. Through the gaping hole the monster had left, Rhys could see two more bodies. Clearly some of his colleagues had not been as fast as he and Benson had been. Jack ducked his head out, looked in both directions, and then waved them over.

“Where’s the terminal?” Rhys asked quietly.

Jack pointed to a large panel set into the wall just down the hall to the left.

“Wow, this might actually work,” Rhys said.

There was a loud, gurgling growl from just around the corner and Benson and Jack both turned to glare at Rhys.

‘Sorry,’ Rhys mouthed guiltily.

They ducked back into the lab and eyed each other silently for a moment, waiting to see what would happen. Heavy footfalls came toward the open entrance and as one they pressed their backs to the walls on either side. The footfalls stopped in front of the hole. Rhys’ heart hammered in his ears and he wished desperately that the alarms would stop so that he could get some kind of clue as to what it was doing.

Then, slowly, the many-eyed head leaned into the room.

“Yeah, okay,” Jack said, and fired the tranq gun twice straight into its face.

The monster howled and reared back in pain as the darts entered its eyes, causing them to burst and drip a slimy mixture of acid, blood, and vitreous fluid.

“Ten minutes!” Jack yelled, pointing at Benson.

They all took off in different directions as the monster struggled to recover. Benson went for a hiding spot on the far end of the room while Jack put several desks and control panels between himself and the monster before dragging the laser gun off his back and opening fire. The resulting burst of orange light forced Rhys to squint and shield his eyes with one hand.

It seemed to work, briefly. The monster’s torso caught on fire where the beam hit it and it fell back a little, roaring in agony once again. But the fire quickly died out and although its skin was singed, there didn’t seem to be much otherwise in the way of damage. It lunged in Jack’s direction.

Rhys cursed and grabbed the closest thing to him – a heavy machine he had to use his cybernetic arm to fully lift – and hurled it at the monster, thwacking it soundly over the head.

“Over here, asshole!” he yelled with more bravery than he felt.

“Not the mass spectrometer!” Benson wailed from his hiding spot.

“Priorities, Benson!” Rhys said.

The monster had turned and begun in Rhys’ direction now. He gulped and remembered the gun, fumbling awkwardly with the safety as it bared down on him, enormous mouth opened wide to reveal its red-stained teeth and the long ropes of acidic saliva that hung from the roof of its mouth. It stopped short and shuddered as Jack shot it once more, the bones in its back igniting like torches. Rhys took the opportunity to raise the gun and aim with his ECHOeye and cybernetic arm, steadily firing several rounds into its eyes. Blue electricity danced across its flesh, drawing out a throaty whine as it crumple to all fours.

“Not bad, kitten!” Jack yelled. “We’ll make a gunslinger out of you, yet!”

Rhys leapt past the monster. “Try the security terminal while it’s down!” he said.

“You’ve got my back?” Jack asked as he headed for the door.

Rhys nodded, trying to look and feel confident about that response, not terrified, and followed him out. They made it to the panel and Jack had pulled up a holographic keyboard and monitor by the time the monster recovered and came tearing after them.

“How long do you need?” Rhys asked, using his ECHOeye to fire another few shock rounds into its open mouth.

The monster swayed and crashed into the wall, leaving a huge dent in the steel. One of its clawed hands scratched long gouges in the metal as it dragged itself upward again.

“Dunno, couple of minutes at the most,” Jack said.

“That might be pushing it,” Rhys warned.

The monster recovered and leapt furiously at the source of its pain. Rhys pulled the trigger another half-dozen times, but the monster seemed to have adjusted to the sensation of being electrocuted. It brought one huge hand down, batting Rhys to the ground like he was nothing. Rhys tried to shoot again but the chamber clicked empty. He cursed and tossed the gun at it instead. The monster didn’t even seem to register the sensation of the small repeater bouncing off its shoulder and clattering away.

Rhys rolled away just in time for the pointed ends of its claws to slam down into the floor where his head had been a second ago. He scrambled away, ankles barely escaping its snapping teeth, and scurried backward until he hit a wall. There was a case with a fire extinguisher just above his head. He glanced at it, glanced at the monster as it tried to tug its claws free from the floor, and then shoved his metal fist through the glass. He grabbed the fire extinguisher out and pulled the pin.

“Doing okay over there, sweetheart?” Jack called as he typed furiously away.

The monster finally managed to wrench itself free and barreled in Rhys’ direction.

“Just peachy!” Rhys yelled, and sprayed chemical foam in the monster’s eyes.

It roared and threw its hands over its face, blinded and grappling desperately to clear its vision. Rhys raised the fire extinguisher's empty metal canister and brought it down heavily on the monster's head with all the force of his cybernetic arm, causing it to buckle and crash to the ground next to him. He clambered to his feet and raced back toward Jack, just as the alarms cut off, leaving a high-pitched ringing sensation in his ears.

“You got it?” Rhys asked.

“Security should be on their way as we speak,” Jack said, raising the laser gun again. “Just have to survive until then.”

He fired at the monster where it was still struggling to climb back onto its feet. It caught the brunt of the beam with its arms, mostly ignoring the effects.

“Aim for its eyes,” Rhys said. “That’s its weakness.”

“The eyes you just covered in flame suppressant?” Jack asked. “With my fire weapon?”

“Fair enough!”

They backed away as Jack continued to fire, aiming for its legs. But soon the monster was standing upright again and lumbering toward them once more, worse for wear and still mostly blind, but alive, angry, and hungry nonetheless. Jack pulled the trigger on the laser gun again and again, until the beam hummed, spluttered, and faded to nothing. He was out of ammo.

“Where the hell is my bait?” Jack asked.

He flipped the gun around and jammed the stock into the monster’s mouth as it snapped at them. Its acidic saliva bit into the metal and began to contort its shape. Jack wrenched it free and struck again, this time into its eyes. It cried out, sounding nearly human – so much so that Rhys felt vaguely uncomfortable – and shook its head, disoriented.

“I’m serious!” Jack shouted. “Bait time!”

But the monster was faltering in its steps. It opened its mouth again and then seemed unable to close it, jaw slipping out of its socket on one side. Something pooled in the back of its throat and then began spilling out onto the floor – it was blood and acid and something black with the consistency of tar, like some kind of infection. The monster raised its claws and they were shaking, curling inward as the skin seemed to shrink and shrivel around the bones.

Skin and flesh started to slough off of it in thick chunks, revealing distended muscles that writhed unnaturally. Blood and acid and tar poured from every new wound that opened. It seemed impossible for one creature to have held so much fluid. The bones in its back loosened and shifted and a few came loose entirely, clattering onto the floor. It sank to its knees, and then, with a low groan, collapsed onto its face.

Jack and Rhys stared at it for a moment, as though hardly daring to believe the formula had worked.

“Son of a taint,” Jack swore at last, tossing the empty gun to the side. “Now I’m gonna have to –”

“– put something else in the Executive Suite, I know,” Rhys finished breathlessly.

Jack looked at him, and then burst out laughing.

“You are a friggin’ gem, princess,” he said, and dragged Rhys down into a kiss.

It was rough and demanding. Jack immediately sunk his teeth into Rhys’ bottom lip to make him gasp and open his mouth. Rhys responded instinctively, like a drowning man thrashing to stay above the waves. It was a clash of tongues and lips, both of them tearing at each other with all the furious need of people who had just almost been killed. Rhys couldn’t tell if he was being kissed or devoured – he wasn’t sure which one was better. His knees wavered threateningly under the sudden rush of endorphins, and Jack looped an arm around his waist, holding him up and pressing their hips flush.

“Mmph, not that this isn’t nice,” Rhys said in a massive understatement as he broke away at last, “but I’d rather not do it in front of a leaking mutant corpse. Also, one of my coworkers is standing right there.”

They both turned to look at Benson, who had emerged from his hiding spot and was hovering in the lab doorway.

“Hi,” Benson said with a small wave, looking and sounding absolutely miserable.

Rhys supposed that if he had to watch one of his coworkers make out with his terrifying, homicidal boss after nearly dying and having a bunch of his friends be ripped to shreds by the nightmarish monstrosity he was partially responsible for creating, he’d be a little put out, too.

“Uh-huh,” Jack said slowly. “What was your name again, kid?”

“Benson, sir,” he squeaked.

“Right, Bunsen,” Jack said, making Rhys wince in sympathy, “not real impressed with your skills as bait, to be honest. Here’s your chance to make it up to me: I’m about to go have rambunctious adrenaline-fueled sex with Rhys here in the penthouse of this enormous space station, which I own, so if you could do me a favor and call the janitors to take care of this,” he gestured to the still slowly melting monster, “situation, that would be great. Okay?”

“O-okay,” Benson warbled.

“Okay, sounds good, ciao!” Jack said, pushing Rhys down the hall.

“Jack!” Rhys hissed.

“What, I’m just making my position clear,” Jack defended. “Gotta stamp out his little crush on you now before it starts to piss me off.”

“He doesn’t have a crush on me!” Rhys said as they entered the elevator.

“Not anymore he doesn’t if he’s got two brain cells to rub together,” Jack said. He pressed the button for the top floor. “Now I believe you said something about ‘carnally-expressed gratitude.’ I might be paraphrasing. The word carnal was definitely used.”

“Shut up,” Rhys said, and pulled him back into a kiss.

It was slower this time, and much less rough. Jack reached up and weaved his fingers through Rhys’ hair, pulling him closer and gently curling into his scalp. His tongue caressed the inside of Rhys’ mouth and Rhys moaned, a hot thrill running up his spine. Jack chuckled against him.

There was a ding as the elevator stopped suddenly. They reluctantly pulled apart to see a crowd of security guards and medical staff standing awkwardly in the opened doors.

“Occupied,” Jack said, reaching around Rhys to press the up button again. “You guys can catch the next one.”

* 

If later asked to recall how they made it from the first elevator to the ID-card activated elevator that went up to Jack’s penthouse then through the enormous front hallway and living room and into the bedroom, all without seeming to ever remove their mouths from one another, Rhys wouldn’t have been able to provide a satisfactory explanation. Possibly a higher power had been at play. Certainly, there had been a lot of Jack sucking on his neck. Rhys had definitely bit him on the ear once, when it seemed that Jack was taking a long time to open one door or another, and the result had been a dangerous sounding laugh and Rhys pressed up against a door frame, Jack grinding their hips together in a slow, dirty roll.

“Impatient little thing,” Jack had murmured. “Be good and I’ll treat you good.”

“No,” Rhys said, rolling his own hips to match him.

And then almost in the blink of an eye he was sprawled out on an enormous bed, coat and boots gone, shirt unbuttoned and pulled out of his pants and Jack licking a path along his tattooed chest, pausing here and there to nip at his exposed skin. Rhys’ back arched off the bed as Jack took his nipple in his mouth and sucked hard, lathing it with his tongue, one hand gliding up Rhys’ side so that his fingers could massage the other.

Rhys let out an incomprehensible sound of want and tugged impatiently at Jack’s collar. Jack reached up with his free hand to swat at him, but pulled away to shuck his jacket off. Rhys followed as though compelled by some unseen force to stay close. He fumbled with the buttons on Jack’s vest and pressed small kisses to the underside of his jaw, right where his throat began, smirking a little when he felt Jack swallow.

“Oh ho ho, _babe_ ,” Jack growled, shrugging the vest off and pulling his sweatshirt over his head. “Trouble like you has no business looking so cute.”

“Please tell me you have lube,” Rhys said, kicking off his pants.

“Duh,” Jack said.

He reached for the bedside table and opened a drawer, coming back with a bottle of lube and a string of condom packets.

“Oh thank god you have condoms, too,” Rhys said.

“Why would I have one but not the other?”

“I dunno, some guys are weird about it.”

“New rule,” Jack said. “No talking about other dudes you’ve slept with unless it’s to say: Wow, I sure don’t remember them anymore! I’ve only ever had one dick in me and it was Handsome Jack’s!”

“Haven’t yet,” Rhys said. “More show, less tell.”

Jack took to this directive with gusto, pushing Rhys’ legs back and pressing his lips to the underside of one thigh, trailing hot open-mouthed kisses down to the edges of Rhys’ briefs. He slipped his fingers into the waistband and pulled, only bothering to shove them partway up Rhys’ legs before descending again to bite one ass cheek. Rhys jumped and groaned and struggled to get his underwear the rest of the way off as Jack licked tenderly at the red indents he had just left.

Teeth, Rhys realized distantly, were starting to become a theme in this relationship.

He looped his arms around his knees and held his legs back as Jack’s hands fell to grip his ass, squeezing momentarily and then stretching him apart. Rhys felt Jack’s hot breath on his hole and thought for one dizzy, overwhelming heartbeat that Jack was going to rim him. The idea alone made his already hard dick twitch and a bead of precum drip lazily down onto his chest.

“God I’d love to eat you out,” Jack said from above him. “Just tongue you open until you’re wrecked and crying from it. But that one’s gonna have to wait until we’re not both not covered in fear sweat and monster juice.”

Rhys let out a moan of relief and despair and then whined as the fat pad of one of Jack’s thumbs brushed over him. It pressed down, gently rubbing, and Rhys’ hole twitched. The thumb withdrew and Jack bit down again, this time on the other cheek. Rhys heard the uncapping and squeeze of the lube bottle. A few seconds later, one wet, but surprisingly not freezing finger was circling his entrance.

 _Doesn’t tip waitresses but does warm the lube_ , Rhys thought. _Good to know._

Then the first finger was pressing in and Rhys bit his lip and curled toes and concentrated on that.

Jack fingered him open quickly but not ungently. There was an edge of desperation in the jerking curl of his fingers, which Rhys was fine with, crying out as Jack struck his prostate. He worked three fingers in and spent the whole time pressing kisses to whatever stretch of Rhys’ skin he could reach – mostly the place where Rhys’ thighs met his ass. Jack also murmured constantly, and for the most part Rhys couldn’t make it out, just a long, fast litany of words. What he did hear – “gorgeous” and “terrible” and “driving me crazy” – caused his heart to skip dangerously in its already inadvisably fast tempo.

Then the fingers were pulling away and Rhys let out a strangled noise of complaint at the sudden emptiness.

“No, come on,” he whined. “Just fucking –”

“Getting there, sweetheart,” Jack said as he rolled on a condom.

He moved his large hands to Rhys’ hips and tugged, shifting them closer together. Rhys let his legs uncurl and fall around Jack’s waist as the tip of his cock pressed against him. Jack paused there for just long enough to make Rhys contemplate violence and then he was pushing slowly in.

“Ohhhhh my god,” Jack breathed, fingers flexing around Rhys’ hips. “Shit. Shit shit shit that feels good.”

Rhys threw his flesh arm over his mouth and bit it in agreement.

“No, don’t cover your face,” Jack said. “Stop. That’s the best part. Babe.” He grabbed Rhys’ wrist and pinned it up to the headboard. “Jesus, look at you.”

He leaned forward and kissed him sloppily, pulling Rhys’ bottom lip into his mouth and sucking on it.

Rhys jerked his wrist slightly to loosen Jack’s grip and grabbed his hand, weaving their fingers together. Jack tensed for a moment, and then relaxed. He curled his fingers tightly around Rhys’ and held their hot palms close together as he bottomed out with a barely audible sigh. Rhys felt it in the rumble of Jack’s skin, like it had become an extension of his own.

“Move,” Rhys demanded.

“Give me a moment or I’m gonna blow my load, Christ,” Jack growled.

“I thought you said you never misfire.”

“And I don’t, so _give me a moment_.”

“A moment might kill me,” Rhys said.

“Nah, I’ve seen you in a firefight now,” Jack said. “You’re made of sturdier stuff.”

“A moment might kill _you_ ,” Rhys threatened.

“Would ya’ look at that?” Jack said. “It’s been a moment.”

And then he was moving, slowly at first, but only at first, picking up speed as Rhys matched him thrust for thrust. Rhys tightened his legs around Jack and gripped the sheets with his metal hand so hard it was a wonder they didn’t tear.

“Knew when I first saw you,” Jack was saying over him, “that it would be this good.”

“No, you didn’t,” Rhys accused.

“Second you stepped off that shuttle,” Jack said. “Legs for miles and that smug look on your face. Call it intuition. Hang on.”

He pulled out abruptly.

“You son of a bitch,” Rhys choked, kicking his legs out. “What the hell –”

Jack flipped him over, pulled his hips up, and thrust back in with an enthusiasm that made Rhys swallow his curse hard and see stars. He barely had a moment to recover as Jack set an unforgiving pace. Rhys reached back to palm his dick only to have his hand batted away and replaced by Jack’s own. It was large and hot and calloused and gave him firm, demanding strokes. One thumb swept over his weeping slit and he bucked back involuntarily.

“F-fuck I’m close,” Rhys stuttered. “I’m gonna cum, fuck.”

“Yeah, you are,” Jack encouraged. “Do it, babe. I wanna feel you tighten up on me and just fucking –”

Rhys gasped and clenched down and pressed his knees hard into the mattress as he came, shooting into Jack’s waiting hand. His ears rang as Jack worked him through his orgasm, still hammering into Rhys without pause. Finally, Jack released his dick and Rhys fell boneless underneath him. Then a hand reached up and wiped a wet stripe down his back.

Rhys scowled. “Did you just –”

Jack groaned loudly and his rhythm faltered. His fingers dug into Rhys’ hips with bruising force and he thrusted shallowly as he came.

“Perfect,” he said, head tipped back and eyes closed.

“I can’t believe you just wiped cum off on me,” Rhys complained. “What is actually wrong with you?”

“You’re easier to clean than the sheets,” Jack reasoned as he pulled out.

“You’re the worst.”

“You say that like I didn’t just give you a spectacular orgasm but I definitely did.”

“It was a team effort, I think.”

“I’ll say,” Jack said. He tied off the condom and tossed it into the trash. Then he reached over and smacked Rhys sharply on the rump. “C’mon, up. Shower.”

“Give me a moment,” Rhys said into one unreasonably comfortable pillow.

“Fear sweat and monster juice,” Jack reminded him. “Not to mention the cum.”

“Your fault,” Rhys said, but dragged himself upward and followed Jack into the attached bathroom.

He was momentarily mesmerized by the broad expanse of Jack’s bare back and so could be forgiven for not immediately noticing the sheer opulence of the room. But when he did notice, he definitely noticed.

It looked more like a small pool house than a bathroom, all done in gleaming marble and gold accents. One wall was overtaken by a huge floor to ceiling mirror with a long counter fixed in the middle. It was littered with about a dozen different hair and skin products. A full chandelier hung suspended from the ceiling, dripping with small delicate lights encased in spun glass. There was an enormous bathtub large enough to drown in and the glass-walled shower was bigger than Rhys’ college dorm room had been. Jack swiped absently at a control panel outside of it and seven shower heads turned on.

“God, I wish I was rich,” Rhys sighed.

Jack’s shoulders shook with laughter.

“Hang on,” Rhys said. “I have to take my arm off.”

Jack turned at that. “You need help?”

“No, I’m used to it,” Rhys said and deftly disconnected the prosthetic in just a few swift motions.

He wavered for a moment, unsteadied like always by the sudden change in the balance of his body, and Jack’s hand shot out to rest against his side in support. Rhys smiled gratefully.

“How’d you lose it?” Jack asked as Rhys carefully set it on a nearby countertop. “If you don’t mind me asking.”

“Accident when I was twelve,” Rhys said, because that was as polite and sensitive as Jack got and you had to give a guy credit for trying. “I got hit by a Dahl truck crossing the street.”

“Fucking Dahl,” Jack said with feeling.

“It was funny, actually,” Rhys said. “When I woke up in the hospital, they were trying to recruit me. They were all, ‘Enlist and we’ll give you a better eye and arm! Ones that fire torpedoes!’ Like I didn’t still have braces and acne. Anyway, my dad’s a lawyer so they did end up buying me a better eye and arm, but without the lifetime of military service in exchange. Or the torpedoes.”

“Torpedoes are overrated,” Jack said. “But if you ever decide you want laser vision, you just say the word, sweet pea.”

“I’m good, thanks,” Rhys said dryly.

Jack didn’t remove his mask to shower, and Rhys felt almost guilty about that. He probably would’ve if Rhys hadn’t been there. He hoped it wasn’t giving Jack any discomfort. If it was, Jack gave no sign of it as he worked shampoo into his hair and then insisted on doing the same for Rhys.

Rhys’ eyes fluttered drowsily shut as Jack’s fingers massaged his scalp and he let out a low sound of satisfaction. Jack pressed a kiss into the corner of his mouth as he worked.

“You’re a liar, by the way,” he said absently.

“How so?” Rhys asked.

“There’s no way you’ve never fired a gun before,” Jack said. “You hit every shot and looked hot as hell doing it.”

“Oh, I cheated,” Rhys said. “I used my ECHOeye to aim. That was my first time firing a gun.”

Jack hummed and kissed Rhys’ temple, right over his port.

“Somehow that’s even hotter,” he said. “And being smarter and better equipped than your enemy’s not cheating, babe.”

“I had an undergrad professor who held the exact opposite position, actually.”

Jack chuckled. “I believe it, you friggin’ troublemaker.”

He tilted Rhys’ head down slightly and then they were kissing with aching slowness. Rhys felt Jack’s dick twitch valiantly against his thigh.

“You know your stupid plan totally saved the day, right?” Jack asked after a moment.

“I guess it wasn’t so dumb after all.”

“No, it was clever,” Jack agreed. “You’re clever. And quick on your feet and stubborn as hell and definitely trouble.”

Rhys shoved his face into the juncture of Jack’s neck and shoulder to hide his blush. Then he bit his lip and reached between himself and Jack to fist them both. Jack inhaled sharply and ground up against Rhys’ dick and hand.

“You’re gonna ruin me,” he muttered into Rhys’ scalp.

 _That’s the plan,_ a small voice in Rhys’ head agreed.

He shut his eyes against it and concentrated on the feeling of Jack against him, on the hot cascade of water running down his back, and the sound of Jack’s heart, just audible with Rhys’ ear pressed to his chest. It was almost strange how much it sounded like his own.

*

After they had both cum again and were finally, thoroughly clean, they toweled off using Jack’s enormous fluffy towels (Rhys covertly rolled his eyes at the gaudy HJ monogram each one had) and collapsed back into bed. Rhys reconnected his arm along the way and received a raised eyebrow from Jack in response.

“You can leave it off, you know,” he said.

“I feel better when it’s attached,” Rhys said honestly. “Otherwise it’s like I’m missing a limb.”

Jack snorted and pulled Rhys into a headlock to ruffle his still wet hair. “And you say I’m bad.”

“You are,” Rhys said, trying to flatten his hair back down again. “You’re horrible.”

“Whatever you say, babe.”

Jack wrapped one arm around Rhys’ waist and threw the covers over both them. The lights dimmed and it wasn’t long before Jack’s breathing had evened out and he was asleep.

And.

This was it.

This was literally the chance Tediore had wanted him to have. They couldn’t have spelled it out with any more clarity.

And Rhys knew he should get up and look for an ECHO, for a personal computer. He really did.

But the bed was so soft and Jack’s arm slung around him was so comfortable and he was just so tired. Honestly, after the morning he’d had, didn’t he deserve a break? Even the CEO of Tediore herself would’ve been sympathetic. Maybe.

He could always do it later, he told himself. There would be plenty of chances after this. And wouldn’t that be nice?

He nuzzled deeper into Jack’s warm side and drifted off into a deep sleep.

When he woke again, he was still curled up against Jack, who had clearly been awake for awhile. He was sitting up in bed, typing on a holographic keyboard with one hand and absently carding the other through Rhys’ hair. Rhys belatedly realized that it was this sensation that had woken him.

“What time is it?” he asked blearily.

“Just after three,” Jack said.

Rhys hummed and sat up, leaning over into Jack’s space to kiss him lightly on the cheek. He heard the soft swishing sound of the holo-display being dismissed and then he was being pulled fully into Jack’s lap and kissed. It was lazy kissing, mostly just the wet press of lips, tongues never doing much more than brushing. Rhys sighed in contentment. Finally, he broke away.

“I should go,” he said. “I need to wash my clothes. Water my ficus. Check to see if I need to find a new internship.”

“Nah, Dr. Moist lived,” Jack said, rubbing his thumbs in gentle circles over Rhys’ hips. “Nasty concussion from getting pistol-whipped by an SMG but that’s it. Dr. Jane will pull through, too, believe it or not. Only four people died in total. That’s way down from our usual rate for R&D accidents. Guess we have your quick thinking to thank for that.”

Rhys grinned and kissed him again.

“What will you do with her?” Rhys asked after a moment. “Dr. Jane?”

“Not much,” Jack snorted. “Put the fear of Jack in her but that’s about it. I know a tough bitch when I see one. I need more people like that, not fewer, and having a couple of mistakes to hold over someone’s head makes it easier to keep them in line in the long run.”

“Hmm,” Rhys said thoughtfully. “But there’s still my laundry. And my ficus.”

“You really have a ficus?” Jack asked.

“I really have a ficus,” Rhys confirmed.

He hadn’t trusted anyone at Tediore to remember to take care of it for him so he’d brought it with him.

“Well god forbid anything happen to the ficus,” Jack said, releasing his hold.

Rhys climbed out of bed and hunted around for his clothing. He managed to find his pants, his shirt, both his socks, and his coat, but his underwear was nowhere to be found. He had suspicions about that.

“You won’t have work for a while,” Jack said as he watched him pull on his boots.

“Color me shocked,” Rhys said.

“Rhys.”

Rhys looked back over his shoulder. Jack’s face was carefully blank.

“Meet me for drinks tomorrow afternoon,” he said.

A warm feeling washed over Rhys and he smiled honestly, fondly.

“Yeah, okay,” he said.

He stood up and headed for the front door. Then he immediately backtracked.

“Jack?”

“Hm?”

“There’s a giant glittering horse statue in your living room?” Rhys said slowly, not sure if he was seeing things. “I think I heard it whinny.”

“Oh, that’s just Butt Stallion,” Jack said dismissively. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Okay,” Rhys said, and decided that was probably good advice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was gonna wait to publish this until tomorrow night at the earliest but fuck it.
> 
> i'm upping the chapter count to four. three was a lie i told myself to avoid admitting this thing is gonna end up being like 40k long. i'm still not confronting it. but this will be four chapters long. also i came to terms with the dick touching. as you may have noticed.
> 
> turn around on this chapter was waaaaaaaaaay faster than i anticipated kind of frighteningly so. please be patient with me while i finish chapter three because i can't guarantee it'll go quite so quickly. there's a ton of stuff in it. not to get too spoilery, but there's going to be lots of words. sentences, even. also rhys becomes the "this is fine" dog personified.
> 
> as before, any kind of feedback you have is really, deeply appreciated. thank you!


	3. Chapter 3

The place they met for drinks was way more casual than _La Fine_ , just a small cantina off the Hub of Heroism near Jack’s office. That left Rhys – who arrived on time and therefore early again – free to get a seat at the bar and nurse a beer while he waited. The hub was busy, which was a given for a workday afternoon, and he fluctuated between watching the comings and goings of the Hyperion peons and reading the group chat again.

Someone had posted a lengthy memorial post for Amy, which was kind of funny in a bizarre, creepy, and vaguely disturbing way. The comments section was filled with people soliloquizing about how sweet she had been – she’d murdered people, hello? – and how her relationship with Theodore was so pure – the secret one that no one had known about?? – and how everyone would miss her very, very much. (Not Rhys!)

One person apparently shared Rhys’ opinion on the matter, because they’d replied, “Um, didn’t this psycho bitch nearly get us all killed? Where’s the memorial for Lionel? The guy she shot?” but it’d been downvoted about a hundred times.

(Nobody, it turned out, had thought Lionel was sweet.)

Further down, the chat turned into a nauseatingly long discussion about just how dashing and heroic Handsome Jack had been when he swept in to rescue them all. There was a lot of ‘he said, she said,’ none of which had a lick of truth to it, but which Jack probably would’ve appreciated because it made it sound like he’d flexed so hard the monster had run crying for its mother.

“It’s true that Handsome Jack was there,” Benson had posted, “but Rhys helped a lot! It was his idea that ended up saving everyone’s lives!”

_Aw, thanks, Benson_ , Rhys thought with a smile. He’d have to apologize on Jack’s behalf later. For the bait thing. And the janitor thing.

“That guy with the tacky skagskin boots!?” someone had replied to Benson. “Yeah right!!!!”

Rhys huffed and set his ECHO face down on the bar, taking a petulant drink. His boots were not tacky. They were chic and timeless and had cost him a fortune. He glanced down at them just to reaffirm that they were as cool as he remembered and was relieved to find that they absolutely were.

There was a sharp intake of breath from the bartender and Rhys turned his head quickly to see what was wrong, but it was just Jack strolling in, typing away at an ECHO. He looked up, spotted Rhys, and tucked the device inside his jacket.

“Been waiting long?” he asked, sinking onto the barstool next to him.

“Fifteen minutes,” Rhys said.

“Oh, good,” Jack said. “What are you drinking?”

“I don’t know; some guy bought it for me.”

“Yeah?” Jack asked sharply with a narrow-eyed glance around the room.

“No, I just wanted to see what you’d do,” Rhys said. Jack gave him a dry look as he blithely continued, “I ordered the first thing I saw on the list. Crawmerax’s Lager, I think.”

“Boring,” Jack scoffed. “Don’t you know how to live, Rhys? If you’re going to drink, you should pick something that looks like it’ll give you radiation poisoning, comes with a tiny umbrella, and has the ABV of rubbing alcohol. Otherwise you’re just squandering your youth.”

“It’s two p.m. on a Thursday, Jack,” Rhys said.

But Jack was already flagging the bartender down.

“Two Eridian Sunsets,” he said. “And go easy on the orange juice.”

The drinks that arrived were certainly within Jack’s parameters – two tall, curving glasses filled with a thick liquid that shifted from a deep, harsh red to vibrant orange and which were garnished with a bright purple berry Rhys didn’t recognize, speared through by a paper toothpick umbrella. Each one came with a colorful straw that did a loop-de-loop in the shape of a star. Rhys plucked up the umbrella on his drink and sucked the berry off in curiosity. He was surprised to find it sweet and fruity with a slight salty tang.

“Mm, what is that?” he asked.

“Pearl berry,” Jack said. “They grow in the reefs on Aquator in huge seaweed cocoons. Don’t get addicted though because if you eat too many you can have a seizure.”

“Oh, uh…” Rhys eyed the rest of the drink with trepidation.

“Squandered youth, babe,” Jack said, taking a long sip.

Rhys took a drink.

“Wow, I think the bartender may have slipped and poured the whole bottle of tequila in there by mistake,” he said, smacking his lips.

“Pretty great isn’t it?” Jack said. “All I need now is a pair of sunglasses and a sandy, white beach. I’ll have to put that on the list of things for the terraformers down in Opportunity to get working on.” He squinted at Rhys. “You own a speedo?”

“No,” Rhys said flatly.

“That’s fine, you can be nude.”

Rhys used the end of his umbrella to flick droplets of Eridian Sunset at him.

“Hey watch the jacket it’s made of infant skin.”

Rhys stared at him, aghast. “ _Infant_ – you’re joking, right?”

“Yeah, I just wanted to see what you’d do,” Jack said.

Rhys scowled as Jack laughed.

“Oh man the look on your face,” he said. “You really think I’d skin a baby, Rhys? You really think that low of me? Be honest, in this vision of yours, am I twirling a cartoon moustache, or am I just a faceless robed figure shrouded in darkness?”

“You’re the one who said infant skin, not me,” Rhys said. “And you really couldn’t pull off facial hair.”

“Wish you’d been around a few years ago to tell me that,” Jack said. “Dark times. Could’ve been avoided.” He took another drink, then squinted at Rhys. “Not even a little five o’clock shadow?”

Rhys grinned around his own straw. “Maybe a little.”

“You on the other hand,” Jack started.

“I think I’d look dignified with a beard,” Rhys defended.

“Better get started now if you want one by the time you turn fifty,” Jack said.

“Just you wait,” Rhys said. “When I’m a wise and distinguished scientist with a huge, bushy beard you’ll be begging me for my hair-growth secrets.”

“Dr. Rhys, huh?” Jack said. “Spending all his time bent over a microscope looking at bug guts and maintaining his beard.”

“Maybe not all my time,” Rhys said loftily.

He and Jack grinned at each other. Their ankles brushed underneath the bar.

“How’d you get into studying alien bugs, anyway?” Jack asked. “Was varkid dissection a childhood dream or yours?”

“Oh, no, I hate it,” Rhys said, because he was completely incapable of pretending otherwise. At Jack’s look, he said, “What, you don’t? They’re gross. It’s gross. And I don’t like hanging out with stuff that actively tries to kill me.”

“Then why,” Jack said slowly, “are you getting a degree in it?”

“Because I’m a coward and an idiot and because I got bored,” Rhys said.

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

Rhys shrugged and tried to think of a way to explain it that wouldn’t break his cover. He thought about his cubicle back at Tediore. He thought about the Beaches of Eden-5 wall calendar. It’d been a freebie from some travel agency that he’d taken only because someone had handed it to him. He hadn’t known what to do with it, so he’d hung it on his cubicle wall and never flipped the page up from January.

“I spent so long thinking my life would turn out a certain way,” Rhys said. “And then it didn’t. Instead of trying to do anything about it, I kind of just started doing what other people told me to. It seemed easier that way.”

“That’s unexpectedly spineless of you,” Jack said. “So, what, you just gave up on what you wanted?”

“The problem is,” Rhys began. And then he stopped and he thought about it and he realized, “The problem is that I have no idea what I want. I never have.”

“That’s a lie,” Jack declared. “I mean, clearly you wanted to have ridiculously good sex with me. Which, check that one off the list. So name something else you want.”

Rhys stared at him.

He was right, in a weird way. He hadn’t done what he’d been told, had he? He’d done what he’d wanted. He’d flirted with Jack the way he wanted to, because he liked it, and he’d slept with him because he wanted to, and he’d liked that, too. And here he was, having drinks with him, not because he necessarily needed to, but because it was nice. Because – lord have mercy – he liked Jack and he wanted to have drinks with him.

Rhys sipped on his Eridian Sunset and thought about that for a moment. He tried to remember the last time he’d done something just because he wanted to and not out of obligation.

_Oh_ , he thought. _That’s right. I hacked Tediore’s R &D files._

“I want,” Rhys finally answered, “to know how Tediore makes their guns explode.”

“Babe,” Jack said, a grin spreading like slow molasses across his face. “We can do much better than that.”

* 

Weapons R&D was located a few floors above Genetics where Rhys had been working and was a great deal flashier. The hall leading out from the bank of elevators was more like a museum than a lab space. The walls weren’t just bare steel but had been splashed with long swipes of yellow paint and were decorated with lit-up cases displaying a timeline of Hyperion’s weapons, starting with a plain looking pistol and leading up to the iconic Transaction sniper series. Periodic monitors played looped clips of the guns in action.

Rhys supposed it made sense. Hyperion had fingers in just about every pie that could be sold, but its real bread and butter was, like Tediore, weaponry. These were Hyperion’s rock stars, almost as much as Jack himself was.

As Jack led him along, he lectured with casual authority and an air of obvious enjoyment.

“Tediore’s non-industrial grade digistruction schema is actually pretty simple,” he said. “We’ve been doing something similar for loader bots for years. Most of the non-structural components for this space station were digistructed on site to cut down on transportation costs and increase construction rates. For a while I even had a guy who used digistruction to create simplistic soldier holograms in combat. ‘Course he ran off with the prototype, and even if he hadn’t, they weren’t smart enough to serve as much more than bullet catchers. They cost a fortune to make, too. Not very economical in the long run.”

Rhys wondered what constituted ‘running off’ and how the guy who’d done it was still alive, from a position of both personal and professional interest, but wasn’t brave enough to actually ask.

“It took me a single work week to reverse engineer Tediore’s schema, explosions included,” Jack went on, “but Hyperion’s not interested. Sure, you can create and recreate from a blueprint at the flick of your wrist, but a Tediore gun always runs the risk of small flaws and glitches appearing on respawn, the kinds of things that are easily caught in a factory setting and which can seriously throw off your accuracy and fire rate if they go unchecked. Every single gun Hyperion puts out is flawless, no exceptions. And, as a bonus, there’s no chance they’re going to explode in your own hands.”

He stopped in front of a heavy set of double-doors underneath a large sign reading ‘Gun Range A.’ The door itself was covered in warnings like ‘Caution: Live Munitions’ and ‘No Entry Without Permit’ and, near the bottom, in very small text, ‘Entry into this gun range serves as agreement that Hyperion Corporation holds no liability for any injury undertaken while on the premises including but not limited to: gunshot wounds, first, second, and third degree burns, electrocution, corrosion, radiation poisoning, loss of eyesight in any degree, loss of hearing in any degree, loss of fingers, toes, or limbs, loss of –’

Rhys’ reading was cut off by Jack using his ID card to open the doors.

“Still,” Jack said. “Ask and ye shall receive. And I really want to see you holding a gun again, you have no idea.”

The range itself was all sleek steel. To the left, the wall was lined with lockers. To the right, there was a long row of tall partitions creating person-sized booths along a thin counter. Beyond that was a large, empty chamber where paper targets were hanging. There were a few people in the booths – most were wearing lab coats, but there were a couple wearing plain clothes. They all looked up when Jack put his fingers in his mouth and whistled sharply.

“Everybody out,” he said. “Chop chop, on the double.”

Either they were accustomed to these sorts of interruptions or they were smart enough not to seem upset by it, because the small crowd quickly and quietly cleared out.

Once they were gone, Jack went over to a panel on the wall and began typing. There was a whirring sound and the partitions dropped into the floor, opening up the room fully. At the same time, a large holo-screen appeared to one side, blank except for a blinking cursor. With a final swipe Jack called up a holo-keypad, dragged it over to the screen, and began typing commands with incredible speed. A moment later, an oddly familiar blueprint was projected on the screen.

Rhys had to stare at it for a moment before he recognized it for what it was. It was the schematic for a pistol from Tediore’s Aimshot series, one he had glimpsed all that time ago on his dinky little office computer. There were differences – this was very clearly the reverse engineered plan that Jack had referenced – but they were almost totally stylistic in nature and the sheer amount of data Jack seemed to possesses on the piece was staggering.

Rhys wondered if Tediore knew he had all this. For a terrifying, gleeful moment, he imagined telling them.

“This one’s simple enough,” Jack said.

He crossed over to the far wall and pressed his palm to a small screen. The bare metal of the wall slid away to reveal an indented gun locker. Rows of ammo drawers sat to either side while the main display was covered in guns of various kinds and styles. Jack pressed a button under the display and it began to move like a conveyor belt. A dizzying number of guns began to slide past, and not just Hyperion tech. Rhys recognized a colorful Maliwan submachine gun, a huge Torgue rocket launcher (could that thing even be fired safely in the gun range?), and even a shotgun that looked like it had been slapped together from scrap metal and a bloody, brutal wish.

Finally, the display stopped, and Jack took down an Aimshot pistol and its small digistruction band. Then he flipped the gun and handed it by the barrel to Rhys.

Rhys took it gingerly but with a little more confidence this time, eyeing the rectangular design with curiosity. It looked and felt much different from the flashy Hyperion pistol he’d held yesterday, and it struck him how odd it was that such an ostensibly simple tool (shoot bullet, kill thing) could come in such various guises.

“Let me see your stance,” Jack said.

Rhys turned toward the targets. He raised the gun and felt pretty dumb doing it. Was he supposed to pose? This had felt much simpler when imminent death had been baring down on him. He aimed with his ECHOeye, thinking that might help, and it did – his arms steadied.

“Turn your eye off,” Jack said.

“Why?” Rhys pouted, even as he did so. “You said it’s not cheating.”

“Because if it’s on I don’t get to do this,” Jack said, sidling up behind him.

He inserted one leg between Rhys’ and kicked them apart slightly.

“Keep a firm but flexible stance,” he said in Rhys’ ear, and reached around with both arms to cup Rhys’ outstretched hands.

“’Firm’ was it?” Rhys asked in amusement.

Jack gently bit the shell of his ear. “Quiet, I’m trying to teach you something here.”

Rhys bit back the reflexive, “Yes, sir,” because he was actually interested in learning how to shoot properly and didn’t think egging Jack on with flirting would be particularly conducive to that end.

“Alright, relax your grip a little, don’t tense your fingers up,” Jack said. “There you go. Keep your finger off the trigger until you’re ready to fire. Go ahead and take the safety off.”

Rhys did so. It was such a small action, but with Jack pressed up against him so close, it felt strangely intimate.

“Look down the sight,” Jack said. “Don’t focus on the target, focus on that, and line up your shot. There’s no rush to pull the trigger – do it whenever you’re ready. But don’t overthink it. Clear your head, focus, and shoot.”

Rhys took a slow breath and squeezed the trigger. The shot hit the target fairly off-center. His shoulders slumped in disappointment.

“That was actually pretty good for a first try,” Jack said. “Here, lemme –” He pulled at Rhys’ hands, adjusting them slightly. “Try that.”

Rhys fired again. It was closer this time.

“Okay, go through the whole clip, just like that.” Jack’s hands fell to rest at his waist.

There were eleven more bullets and Rhys took them slowly, taking the time to line up each one. Jack’s presence behind him faded to a steady, reliable warmth, like an anchor holding him fast. It was almost meditative, he thought, watching the target gather holes near its center. The last couple were only a few inches off the dot.

“Now,” Jack said, backing a step away from him once the clip was empty, “throw the gun.”

Awkwardly, Rhys brought his arm back and tossed it. It bounced off the ground a couple yards in front of him and then exploded.

“Wow, nice overhand,” Jack said. “Can really tell you were the star of the baseball team, there, kiddo.”

Rhys blushed and glared at him. “If you’re just going to make fun of me –”

“Aw, don’t be like that, okay, here,” Jack said, reaching out to pull over the holo-screen and open a blank window. “So, you’re a scientist, tell me what data you just collected.”

Rhys blinked and then looked over at the place where the gun had exploded. “Well,” he started slowly, “it didn’t explode until I threw it.”

“What else?” Jack asked, typing that in.

“It didn’t explode until it hit the ground,” Rhys added. “Also, the magazine was empty.”

“Good start,” Jack said, and pressed a button on the band, digitizing a new Aimshot.

“You’re kind of a nerd,” Rhys said, surprised, as Jack handed it to him.

“Shut up,” Jack said, reaching out to ruffle his hair. “Fire five or six shots from that. You can use your ECHOeye this time.”

Rhys activated his ECHOeye and aimed toward the target. He fired off six shots in quick succession and each one hit the target in a small cluster nearly exactly on the dot.

Jack wolf-whistled. “Yeah, that’s hot,” he said.

“I think this might be more for you, not me,” Rhys mused.

“Everything’s for me, babe, but it’s also for you,” Jack said. “Throw that bad boy and see what happens.”

Rhys knew what would happen but he threw it anyway. It made it a little bit more of a respectable distance this time before exploding again, with slightly more punch than before.

“Bigger magazine, bigger explosion,” Rhys said.

“Sure,” Jack said, digitizing a third. “So toss that one.”

Rhys paused, and then did so. The gun clattered uselessly away and lay still in the middle of the gun range.

“Huh,” he said. “When there’s a full magazine, there’s no explosion.”

“Interesting, right?” Jack asked. He gestured to the holo-screen. “Here are your data points – time for your hypothesis.”

Rhys looked at the screen thoughtfully. “It’s something to do with the bullets,” he concluded after a second.

“Getting there, but that’s not a hypothesis, and I know you know that.”

“Okay, so,” Rhys licked his lips and tried again. “Firing a shot causes some kind of reaction that isn’t expressed until…until there’s an impact. It’s a two-step process: firing primes the charge, and throwing the gun – or maybe even just hitting it hard – triggers it. Something about the bullet leaving the chamber must make a change in the gun itself.”

“Knew you were sharp,” Jack said with a grin. He turned to the screen and pulled the blueprint back up, pointing to a corner of the diagram with a cross section of a bullet. “Tediore digistructs not only the gun into your hands, but the bullets in its magazine as well, and the bullets aren’t standard. The shells contain a trace chemical that leaves streaks on the chamber when they’re discharged. The gun’s material isn’t standard either – the metal is actually a compound which becomes highly volatile when exposed to that trace. All it takes is one solid bang and the whole thing goes up. If there are more bullets in the clip, you can bet the chemical present in those shells will increase the explosion’s size.”

“That seems…dangerous,” Rhys said. “I’m sure there are loads of people who carry these things around with half-empty magazines, never knowing how risky it is. It seems inevitable that someone will lose their fingers, or worse. Surely they must’ve considered that in the design process, though?”

“Well, Tediore’s selling point has always been that it’s cheap and fast,” Jack said, hopping the counter to retrieve the thrown gun, “not safe and reliable. That’s fine by me. They can corner the ‘dumb and desperate’ market all they want. Hyperion will always be the manufacturer with class.”

He stooped to pick up the pistol and returned to Rhys, placing both it and the band in front of him.

“So there you have it,” Jack said. “Now you know the incredible secret behind Tediore’s exploding guns. You satisfied? Are all your hopes and dreams fulfilled?”

“I mean,” Rhys said, trailing off.

He frowned. It had always seemed like such a big deal, when he’d been working in a cubicle at Tediore, like it was the only thing in the world worth knowing. Now it felt like just another piece of information. Trivia.

“Like I said,” Jack smirked, “we can do better.”

“Like what?”

“I am so glad you asked,” Jack said. “Rhys, babe, I’m going to show you something that only one in a billion people ever get to see. You interested?”

Rhys looked down at the Aimshot sitting innocently on the counter and then back at Jack. He nodded.

* 

They left Weapons and headed down a full ten floors to a level of R&D that was not labeled. It had an initial security check point right outside the elevator, before they had even reached any of the labs. Jack breezed them past it with another swipe of his ID card and then Rhys was being led down a hall that branched out into a huge open work space filled with scientists hunched over desks and gathered in small clusters, talking.

As they walked down the rows of work stations, Rhys spotted the edges of strange looking projects between fingers and through the gaps in equipment. One scientist was prodding at something oblong-shaped, surrounded by a faint green light. It looked like it was floating.

“Is that…Eridian technology?” he asked, gaping.

“I don’t let anyone squirrel away in their private labs to mess with this stuff on their own,” Jack said. “Everybody’s got eyes on everybody down here. Increases the rate at which things blow up, but sharply decreases the rate at which people do things to seriously piss me off.”

A nervous looking man suddenly scuttled up to Jack’s side, clipboard wavering in his white-knuckled grip.

“Uh, Handsome Jack, sir, I didn’t realize you’d be dropping by today,” he said. “We still haven’t received word back from Dr. Tannis and her –”

“Relax, pumpkin,” Jack said. “I’m not here on business. As long as we’re still on schedule, you’ve got nothing to worry your dopey little head about. I’ll be back on Tuesday morning for the full report.” He paused and narrowed his eyes, head turning to actually focus on the scientist. “We _are_ still on schedule, right?”

“Yes!” the scientist squeaked. “Everything is! Yes! On schedule! Like you said! Sir!”

Jack stared at him suspiciously for a second, and then rolled his eyes and said, “Yeah, okay, that better be true.”

The scientist seemed to take this as a dismissal, because he turned and fled. Rhys watched him go and then turned to look at Jack curiously.

“The people down here are all a bunch of rats,” Jack said, frustration apparent in his tone. “I can’t turn my back for two seconds without someone getting power hungry and going rogue. You thought yesterday was messy, wait ‘til you see a guy inject straight eridium into his own veins to operate what he thinks is an alien power suit but which turns out to be an ancient garbage disposal.”

Rhys laughed nervously.

“And that Dr. Tannis is the biggest rat of all,” Jack went on, somewhat distantly. “Sneaky little… Not like I have a choice, but…”

“I guess…it’s a good thing you’re a snake,” Rhys said.

Jack glanced at him. Rhys made a chomping motion with his teeth. The corner of Jack’s mouth curled and he slung an arm around Rhys’ shoulders, pulling him to his side.

“You’re damn right I am,” he said. “Now let’s see what you make of this.”

They came to a stop in front of a doorway that had nowhere for Jack to swipe his ID card. Instead he leaned forward and a slow beam emitted from a lens above the door scanned his retina. There was a beep and a click and the door slid open.

The next room was dim and huge and much more sparsely populated. The walls were covered in banks of electronics, the high ceiling lined with huge pipes and wires, but the center of the room was the focus. There, encased in a shimmering field of violet light, was a large cone-shaped object. It rotated slowly, the purple etchings on its sides shining with internal-movement.

Rhys stopped in his tracks, the air nearly knocked out of his lungs.

Everyone knew that Handsome Jack had opened a vault and sent eridium flooding through the universe. But Rhys had never given much thought to what had happened, in the end, to the vault key.

“Whoa,” he breathed.

“Beautiful, right?” Jack asked.

Beautiful didn’t even begin to cover it.

“It’s goddamn gorgeous,” Rhys said.

He stepped right up to the rail around the containment field and gripped it with both hands, staring awestruck at the one-in-a-million artifact, the ancient power that turned the tides.

“It’s dormant right now,” Jack said, joining him. “Vault keys take two hundred years to charge and are totally useless in the interim. This one was used on Elpis four years ago. It’ll be another hundred and ninety-six years before it’s ready again, but Hyperion will be waiting.”

Rhys looked sideways at him.

“Elpis?” he asked. “I thought the vault you opened was on Pandora. Five years ago.”

“That,” Jack said, “is a long ass story.” He spread his hands against the rail, leaned in close, nose almost up against the forcefield, and let out a sigh. “This…this is my legacy.”

And the words should have been magnificent, momentous, the weight of the universe with all of Handsome Jack and Hyperion’s might holding it aloft, but Jack had a distant look on his face and his voice was wistful. He stared at the vault key and seemed to look through it and see something else instead.

Then his gaze flicked to Rhys and he smirked. “You want to touch it?”

“What, really?” Rhys asked. “Can I?”

“As long as you promise not to break it,” Jack teased.

He extended both his hands and reached into the forcefield toward the vault key. As his fingers met the stone, the key’s rotation stopped, and it fell gently into his palms. Rhys watched in surprise as Jack pulled back with it, bringing it out into the open air.

“You can just reach in and take it?” Rhys asked, looking around the room at all the scientists Jack had just called power-hungry rats.

“I can, sure,” Jack said. “If anyone else tried it, they’d lose their hands faster than you can say, ‘ _AARGH oh my god my hands my hands AAAAAH I’ve lost my hands and the pain is excruciating oh my god AAAH!_ ”

“That takes a while though?” Rhys said. “I mean, that’s not very fast.”

“You only say that because you’ve never –” Jack paused.

“Because what?” Rhys asked with one eyebrow raised. “Because I’ve never what?”

“Admittedly this joke would’ve landed better if you still had both arms to catch it with,” Jack allowed. “The point is, it would disintegrate your hands and it would do it pretty damn quickly. ‘S how I secure my office too. You want to touch this shit or what?”

Rhys hesitated, and then reached toward it with his flesh hand. He placed his index finger on one stone ridge, almost shocked to find it real and solid, and then laid his whole palm flat against it. The key was cold and hard like a rock should be, but something within it vibrated gently with unseen energy.

“It’s like,” he started, “the vault’s already yours. Just by touching it. That’s what it feels like.”

“Ooh, that’s dangerous thinking, babe,” Jack said, face lit up with glee. “Next thing you know you’re down there in the dirt and the blood digging with your bare hands like the rest of ‘em. Vault Hunter Rhys.”

“No way,” Rhys said, even as he stared, transfixed. “I wouldn’t last ten seconds. But. It does feel. Nice.”

“Power usually does,” Jack said.

There was a notification sound from the ECHO at his hip. He frowned, but picked it up and scrolled through whatever message had appeared on his screen.

“Okay, yep, this one I have to take,” he said. “Not even gonna strangle this guy for pinging my personal, wow. Well. Maybe a little bit. Can’t have people going around taking liberties, after all.”

He turned to replace the vault key in its containment field and Rhys’ hand fell away, still tingling slightly.

“Sorry to cut this short, sweetheart,” Jack said. “But tell me I don’t know how to deliver.”

“You were right,” Rhys smiled. “This is much better.”

* 

Jack escorted Rhys back up to the Hub of Heroism – and maybe they made out in the elevator, but that definitely wasn’t going to become a habit – and then departed to his office, leaving Rhys with time to kill. For a while he meandered up and down along the store fronts, window shopping and trying not to think too hard, but on the pittance of station credits he was being paid as Dr. Headland’s assistant, he couldn’t afford anything and the shine of it quickly wore off.

The thing is, he told himself as he wandered, everyone knew Jack had opened a vault. Everyone knew he had a vault key. It wasn’t really useful information, especially since it had to charge for two hundred years. As for the Aimshot, well, what was Tediore going to do about that? It wasn’t like Jack had stolen the plans. He’d just figured it out.

“Hey Mrs. Tediore,” Rhys pictured himself saying, “it’s me, Rhys, back from Hyperion. The information I have for you is that Handsome Jack is smart. I’ll take that check now, please.”

No matter how you looked at it, it wasn’t worth relaying. So why did Rhys feel so uneasy as he walked along? Why did he feel like he was making a mistake, and that Tediore wouldn’t be pleased with him?

He stopped in front of a long bay of windows and looked out through Helios’ thin, fog-like atmosphere at the curve of the nearby Eye. Small black dots flitted about and Rhys thought for a moment they might be birds of some kind, until he realized that wasn’t possible. They were repair bots, moving in clusters, going this way and that to clean windows and clear away debris.

Suddenly, miserably, Rhys wished he’d come to work at Hyperion instead of Tediore. He tried to imagine it, imagine crossing paths with Jack in a more natural way, but found that he couldn’t. Jack was so far removed from all the Hyperion employees. He didn’t even notice them as he moved through the station, barely acknowledged even the ones he spoke to, like Benson. He was like Rhys as he stood there watching the repair bots – aware of them, vaguely, but hardly caring, and always separated by some impenetrable barrier of greatness.

A barrier that Rhys, somehow, had maybe possibly found himself on the other side of.

_Dear Agony Aunt_ , he mentally composed. _What does it mean when a guy shows you his vault key? Additional details: I have to rob him or I’ll be killed and he will definitely kill me if he finds out._

Rhys curled his hand into a fist and rested it against the glass.

_This is useless_ , he thought. _Just stop worrying about it. Do what you’re supposed to and everything will turn out fine._

That was, after all, what he’d been telling himself for the last five years.

He turned away from the windows and headed back down to his apartment to play video games and tend his ficus and hope his parents weren’t too worried about the sudden drop-off in his calls home.

* 

Friday and most of Saturday passed quietly, and Rhys used the free time to aggressively relax. He finally got around to hooking up the flat screen in his temporary apartment to the station entertainment network and spent a truly heinous amount of time vegged out on the couch watching a show called _As Promethea Burns_.

It was a fabulously overacted soap opera set on a fictional satellite of Promethea where apparently no one had anything better to do than attend parties, gossip by swimming pools, and sleep with each other’s spouses, but never their own. Nearly all the characters were unlikable and entirely responsible for their own terrible situations. In between ad breaks – exclusively for Hyperion products and services – Rhys found himself rooting for Barbara, the wealthy but aging matriarch whose villainous actions were made almost comical by the script’s repeated insistence that she was blind and wheelchair-bound following an accident at an eridium processing plant in the previous season. Rhys was positive that by the end of the current season both of these conditions would prove to have been fake. And also her hair, but that might’ve just been the costume department’s low budget.

On Saturday in the late afternoon, Jack called him.

“I’ve been messaging you for like an hour,” he said as Rhys picked up. “What the hell are you so caught up in that you’re too good for Handsome Jack all of a sudden?”

“Jasmine bought identical anniversary rings for both her husband and the guy she’s having an affair with, only they’re both engraved, and she just realized that she accidentally gave her husband the wrong one, so now she has to rush back across the moon’s surface with a faulty Oz kit to retrieve it before he sees,” Rhys said. “You know, at first I really hated Jasmine and thought she was a cheating skank, but now I kind of sympathize. It’s not like she can get a divorce when her husband has the controlling shares to her beloved late father’s ice cream company which he made her swear to protect on his death bed. She’s just trying to make the best of a bad situation.”

“…None of that had remotely any baring on reality, so I’m ignoring it,” Jack said. “Come up to my office – some cool, real life shit is about to go down.”

Rhys sat up. “Right now?”

“Well, you would’ve had more lead time if you’d looked at your friggin’ messages,” Jack said. “How do you even miss that? It’s literally built into your head.”

“I rerouted all notifications to my handheld a few years ago,” Rhys said. “There was this douchebag in one of my classes who didn’t like me and set up a program to ping my ECHO once a minute for the entire span of our written final.”

“That’s pretty funny, actually,” Jack said.

“It doesn’t surprise me at all that you think that,” Rhys said. “I’ll be up in a couple minutes.”

“Better make it quick, babe, or you’ll miss the show!”

Rhys quickly swapped his sweatpants out for actual trousers and headed up to Jack’s office. The receptionist buzzed Rhys in with a curious look on her face, as if baffled that someone could survive multiple trips. Rhys gave her a little wave hello. He found the office less imposing now, especially when a giddy-looking Jack waved Rhys around to his side of the desk to look at one large holo-screen.

It was split into four sections, each one a different view of a walled-in cluster of shacks down on Pandora’s surface. Rhys wasn’t sure what he was supposed to be seeing – there were a few figures hanging out around a fire pit drinking, but not much else was happening.

“They’re doing the first official test of the bioweapon in a few minutes,” Jack said. He chuckled. “These dumb bandits have no idea what’s coming.”

Rhys looked at him, alarmed.

“I thought work in Genetics had been stopped,” he said.

“Your team, yeah,” Jack said. “Your main project is gone and both the team leads are hospitalized. But there’s no point in making everyone else stop, too, especially since this was almost finished.”

Rhys swallowed and looked back at the screens. One of the bandits sitting at the fire laughed at something one of the others had said. Another used a long stick to poke at the skag haunch they were roasting.

“Uh, I don’t think I –” Rhys began.

“Ooh, here we go, the sniper’s in position, be quiet,” Jack said. “Watch, watch, watch.”

The bandit who had laughed suddenly slumped forward and the others leapt up, drawing guns and looking wildly around. But the slumped bandit wasn’t dead. His body shifted and then began to change. It was hard to make out the details on the grainy, silent holo-screen, but even so it was impossible to deny how much pain he must be in. His limbs twisted and bent at unnatural angles, head thrown back in a silent scream. Suddenly he was growing, bursting out of his ragged clothes, skin melting and bone ripping through flesh.

The other bandits backed away slowly, turning their weapons on the mutant. There was a muzzle flash as one of them fired, but as had been the case with Theodore, it barely seemed to notice. As the transformation finished, it opened its mouth in a silent roar and threw itself at its former friends. The camp descended into chaos.

“It’s like seeing art in progress,” Jack sighed, leaning back in his chair. “I’m so glad you suggested this.”

Rhys grimaced.

On screen, more bandits burst from their shacks. One huge man in an old Atlas helmet grabbed a rocket launcher and fired at the mutant, taking an arm clean off. The wound began spraying acid and blood, soaking a nearby bandit who fell to the ground shrieking and clawing at his corroded skin. The mutant leapt at the bandit with the rocket launcher and sank its teeth into his face.

“Isn’t this great?” Jack asked.

“No, not really,” Rhys said glumly. “Kind of the opposite.” He paused. “That’s a lot of blood.”

“Oh, come on, they’re bad guys!” Jack said. “Look, see that big one at the front with the geyser coming out of his eye socket? Name’s Sharpjaw – Pandoran naming conventions, don’t ask. He once beheaded a woman with a rusty machete and ate her brain in front of a crowd of screaming orphans. What’s worse than that? Guy deserves to die.”

“Can you honestly say you’ve never beheaded someone?” Rhys asked.

“…Personally?” Jack asked. “With my own two hands?”

Rhys looked up at the ceiling.

“I’ve definitely never dipped into cannibalism if that’s what you’re worried about,” Jack said in what he seemed to think was a reassuring tone.

“You have _got_ to start tipping waitresses, Jack,” Rhys said.

“What?” Jack blinked at the apparent non-sequitur. “Why?”

“It’s the only way to get my conscience to shut the hell up.”

“This was _your_ idea, babe,” Jack said.

“Don’t remind me,” Rhys muttered, and turned away from the screen to examine Jack’s desk instead.

The surface was almost totally bare, most of Jack’s work likely in the network rather than on printed paper, but there was a stack of folders sitting to one side, and a framed photo on the other. Rhys’ eye caught on it. It was a picture of a young girl – no older than nine or ten at the most, probably younger – with a broad grin and bright blue eyes. She was pale, with long, black hair, and she was flashing the camera a peace sign.

Rhys stared at her. There hadn’t anyone like that in the file on Jack’s known associates that Tediore had given him. He definitely hadn’t seen any children since arriving on Helios. But there she was, just sitting out on Jack’s desk in a carefully placed picture frame like she was somebody important.

“Who’s that?” Rhys asked before he could stop himself.

Jack glanced away from the screen, and then, as he focused on what Rhys was pointing to, his face twisted into a frown. “That’s Angel,” he said shortly.

“…Angel?”

“Shhhhheeeeeeee’s my daughter,” Jack said with a loud sigh. He turned abruptly in his seat and reached forward to place the frame face down on the desk.

“You have a _daughter_?” Rhys asked dumbly, honestly blown away.

“Yeah.”

Rhys opened his mouth.

“Okay, conversation closed!” Jack said, cutting him off. “You don’t want to talk about decimating the bandit scum of Pandora and I don’t want to talk about my conspicuously absent child! Let’s move on!”

Rhys eyed him silently. Jack had turned back to the screen but he was still frowning deeply, no longer as mesmerized by the bioweapon test as he had been before. There was a tense set to his shoulders and he’d started drumming his fingers on his arm rest absently. Rhys wondered why he even had a picture of his daughter sitting out on his desk so brazenly if it was such an uncomfortable topic for him.

_Because no one ever sees it_ , he realized. _No one ever stands on this side of the desk except for him._

Rhys felt suddenly guilty that he had brought it up at all.

On screen, the mutated bandit began to melt, surrounded by the unmoving forms of the bandits it had killed. One of the remaining survivors kicked over the roasting skag in apparent frustration. Another bent over Sharpjaw’s corpse. Rhys thought he was having a moment of grief, but he just began rifling through the former bandit leader’s pockets.

“Wow, they move on fast,” he said as a third picked up Sharpjaw’s fallen helmet and put it on.

“No loyalty among thieves,” Jack said. He relaxed as it became clear Rhys wasn’t going to push the Angel thing any further. “Also, they’re stupid. Hopefully they’ve learned their lesson about knocking off my eridium transports, though. And with absolutely no casualties on my side! The formula’s not cheap to make, but the fact that I only needed a single bullet from a single sniper almost makes up for it!” He closed the screen and turned to Rhys again. “That calls for a celebration, I think.”

Rhys cocked an eyebrow at him. “What’d you have in mind?”

“A romantic dinner up in my penthouse,” Jack said.

“Romantic,” Rhys repeated.

“Yeah, I’m gonna romance the pants off of you,” Jack said. “Literally.”

“Telling me you’re trying to get into my pants isn’t very romantic.”

“Geeze, picky, picky,” Jack complained. “Alright, Mr. High Standards, what’s your idea of romance, then?”

Rhys hummed. “Dinner’s a good start.”

* 

Rhys was disturbed to find that the giant horse statue dubbed ‘Butt Stallion’ had changed locations since his last visit to Jack’s penthouse. When asked about it, Jack said, “It’s a _horse_ – it _moves_ ,” in exasperation, as if this should be obvious, so Rhys was pretty sure he was having his leg pulled. Putting in the effort to have someone come up and move it specifically to mess with him was impressive, though, so he let it slide for the time being.

Rhys hadn’t honestly believed that Jack was intending to make dinner for him, but he was still a little disappointed when a large stack of restaurant menus was passed his way.

“Pick whatever you want,” Jack said. “The world is your oyster.”

“What if I want you to make me something?” Rhys asked.

“You do not want that,” Jack said. “I can’t cook. The last time I tried, it was boxed macaroni and cheese and the results had to be removed to a biohazard disposal facility by a hazmat team.”

“Maybe I would’ve found that charming,” Rhys tried. “Maybe I would’ve thought your clumsy attempt was romantic.”

“What’s romantic about failure?” Jack asked seriously.

Rhys thought that was fairly telling, kind of sad, and a very long conversation he was not ready to get into, so he shrugged and started flipping through the menus in search of pizza.

Pizza turned out to be a more divisive choice than Rhys had expected, because he liked pineapple on his, and Jack seemed to think this was a moral failing on par with being a war criminal. Rhys carefully kept from pointing out that Jack had just used a biochemical weapon, which literally actually made him a war criminal, and compromised on a pizza that had absolutely no fruit or vegetables of any kind, but a terrifying amount and variety of meats.

The pizza arrived quickly and they had just settled onto the sofa, Rhys’ legs thrown over Jack’s lap, when Jack’s ECHO pinged.

“Should’ve strangled him a little more than that, I guess,” Jack muttered to himself as he set his slice back in the box and picked up the device. But he brightened considerably as he read. “Oh ho ho! It’s been a good day for Hyperion! All my little ducklings are lining up to be shot!”

“I don’t think that’s the intended spirit of that saying,” Rhys said.

“Celebratory dinner has to wait a little while,” Jack said, moving Rhys’ legs so that he could stand. “Just, uh, hang out, keep the pizza warm, shouldn’t be more than a few hours.”

Rhys let his head thump back against the couch in annoyance.

“How am I supposed to keep the pizza warm?” he groused.

“I don’t know, sit on it,” Jack said. He looked up from his ECHO at last. “This really is critical, babe. I’ve been waiting on this deal to go through for months now. It’s been like pulling teeth.”

Rhys set his pizza down, mollified, and sat up to lean over the back of the couch toward him. “You work hard, don’t you?” he asked.

Jack gave him a look. “Of course I do, I’m the CEO of the biggest corporation in the universe. What, you thought it ran itself?”

“No, sorry, that’s not what I meant,” Rhys backtracked. “It’s just you make it seem like it’s all really easy, like you’re not even trying.”

“Never let ‘em see you sweat, Rhys,” Jack laughed. There was a slight edge to it. “Not even when you’re standing in the inferno.”

Rhys hesitated and then reached forward to tug on Jack’s jacket. Jack allowed himself to be pulled down and Rhys kissed him on the cheek.

“Well I for one like to see you sweat a little,” he said. “It makes it seem like it all matters.”

Jack leveled him with a speculative expression that made Rhys feel suddenly like he was being dissected. He flushed, let go, and rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment.

“Or, I don’t know,” he said. “If you care about it, it must be important. That’s all.”

Jack’s lips curled lazily. He gave Rhys’ forehead a noisy kiss.

“Why, I like seeing you sweaty, too, babe.”

“That’s really not what I said.”

“Hang on to that thought,” Jack went on, as if he hadn’t heard. “I’ll be back here and sweating for you before you even know it.” He straightened up and turned to go down the hall.

“That’s not romantic!” Rhys called after him. “It’s gross!”

Jack flipped him off and opened a door using his palm print and a retina scan. Rhys watched him disappear inside, then collapsed back onto the couch again.

The frozen Butt Stallion stared balefully across at him from her position by the window.

_ECHO_ , the voice of Tediore’s CEO floated through his brain. _Personal computer_.

_Shut up_ , Rhys thought back. _He’s right down the hall in the room that probably has all that stuff anyway. Also, I already know for a fact that he likes putting cameras in statues and Butt Stallion creeps me out._

He picked up his slice of pizza and munched on it lazily, staring out at Elpis and the stars. He hoped Jasmine had made it across the moon’s surface okay. And that next time she picked gifts that were a little more distinctive.

Once he’d finished eating, Rhys took the rest of the pizza into Jack’s kitchen – sleek and well-outfitted in the most expensive chrome appliances on the market, despite the fact that he apparently never used any of them – and rifled around for containers to store it in. Jack could microwave it later if he wanted. Pizza tasted better that way, anyway. Jack’s fridge was empty except for beer and take out boxes. Rhys examined the contents, almost impressed.

“I mean, I can’t cook either, but at least I try sometimes,” he said to himself. “This is sad, Jack.”

He retreated to the couch and pulled out his handheld. Then he paused, halfway toward pulling up the group chat. Butt Stallion’s head had turned to face the other direction.

Rhys squinted at it suspiciously and then craned his neck to look back toward the doorway Jack had disappeared into. The door was open still, light spilling out into the hall, and he could hear the muffled sound of keys clicking.

“Very funny,” Rhys said, trying hard not to be unnerved.

The group chat had pretty much moved on from Amy’s tragic demise, although there were still some lingering tributes. With both Amy the brown-noser and Lionel of the oft-emptied hot water pot dead, as well as both Dr. Jane and Dr. Moist in the hospital, the lab assistants had run thin on things to complain about. Someone had started bitching about the dress code, but it hadn’t gotten much attention.

There was one thread that had a large number of replies, actually. It was Benson’s post from a few days previous. Rhys blinked and opened it.

“That guy with the tacky skagskin boots!? Yeah right!!!!” had been the last comment Rhys had read.

The thread, he was horrified to discover, had only gained steam from there.

“I can’t stand that guy,” someone had added. “Just because he’s Dr. Headland’s personal assistant he thinks he’s better than all of us, but he hasn’t even graduated yet. Like, come on.”

“Did you hear that rumor that he slept with Handsome Jack?” someone else continued. “I don’t believe it for a second. He isn’t even that attractive! He’s just tall! Wake up, people!”

“It’s just those ugly boots, anyway. I bet he puts shoe lifts in them.”

“I bet he started those rumors about sleeping with Handsome Jack himself.”

“Who DOES that? It’s borderline creepy. How do you think Handsome Jack would feel if he found out?”

“You’re so right. It’s invasive and weird. Maybe someone should talk to HR? I don’t want to start shit, but…”

“Honestly, it’s better to take the high road. It’s like Dr. Jane said: If he wants to behave like an animal, that’s his choice. It doesn’t mean the rest of us have to sink to his level. We all know the truth, and that’s what matters.”

Rhys felt the blood draining from his face as he read on, each comment building off the previous in a snowball of shit talk so large it was like Helios had experienced a blizzard.

_Do they even care that I can see all this?_ he wondered.

He stopped, thumb hovering over the screen. Benson had been the one to invite him to the group chat. Benson, who was not a very popular guy. Benson, who had not said anything else in the whole thread. And Rhys had never even put his name in his profile.

_They don’t know that I can see this_ , he realized. _They would never say this to my face. They’d be too scared._

“In my opinion,” came a comment near the bottom of the thread, “the only kind of person who lies about sleeping with someone else is someone who’s deeply insecure and desperate for attention. It’s pathetic.”

“You think he’s trying to pick people up by saying he slept with Handsome Jack?” was the last comment. “LOL what a slut.”

Rhys stood up, threw the ECHO onto the couch, and stormed down the hall toward Jack’s study.

“I don’t know what was so important that you had to abandon perfectly good pizza,” Rhys said, coming to a halt in the open doorway, “but I need you for five minutes right now.”

The room was overflowing with computer equipment, filing cabinets, and half-finished robotics. In one corner there was a large workbench and a tool cabinet. Jack was sitting at a desk in the middle, an array of holo-screens pulled up in front of him.

“Uh, this is huge,” he said, still typing. “It’s going to totally change the whole friggin’ market – I’m finally breaking ground with this trade deal on –”

“I don’t care, someone on the ECHOnet just called me a slut,” Rhys said fiercely. “Five minutes. A bottle of champagne, candles if you have them, and an obscene amount of bubble bath.”

Jack paused and turned to look over his shoulder. “That sounds more like an hour to two hours. An extremely nice two hours, but still two hours.”

“Five minutes,” Rhys repeated. “That’s it.”

He turned and headed toward the bathroom. Jack seemed to be more curious than annoyed because he followed, leaning up against the bathroom door to watch as Rhys started to fill his enormous bath tub.

“Champagne and candles,” Rhys snapped at him as he hunted through Jack’s mountainous collection of soap bottles.

“This is the angriest sexy thing I’ve ever been party to,” Jack said. “And I once slept with a woman who carried a leather whip.”

Rhys glared at him. Jack turned back out into the penthouse and returned a few minutes later with a bottle of champagne, two slim flutes, and a box of tealights tucked under one arm. Rhys, having filled the tub to the point of overflow with sparkling pink bubbles, took all of it. He popped the cork on the champagne with brutal efficiency, poured two healthy glasses, and began scattering the candles around on the tiles by the tub’s edge.

“You planning to explain any of this at any point?” Jack asked.

“Sometimes you have to take a stand, Jack,” Rhys said. “Sometimes you have to put your foot down and show people that, yes, you are a coward, and a wimp, and not very good at your job, but, despite all that, still objectively better than them in nearly every regard – including looks! – and absolutely not above a public mass shaming. Do you have something to light these with?”

Jack handed him a book of matches.

“Matches?” Rhys asked, momentarily distracted. “Really?”

“I like the way it feels to strike ‘em,” Jack said. “Tactile.”

Rhys shrugged and lit the candles. He pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it aside, then started undoing his belt. He paused when he noticed Jack still standing there.

“You too,” he said.

Jack, still looking puzzled, but at least mostly amused, followed suit.

“Elaborate on the thing about someone calling you a slut,” he said as they slipped into the tub. “Wait, what about your arm?”

“I need it,” Rhys said. “I won’t submerge it; it’s fine. To answer your question, my coworkers started gossiping about me without realizing I can and do read everything they say, so now I’m going to take a picture of myself enjoying the height of luxury in Handsome Jack’s penthouse with Handsome Jack himself and everyone will have to eat their words about me lying for a rumor I didn’t even start and don’t even want and also acknowledge that I’m way more desirable than any of them ever will be.” He went to hand Jack a flute of champagne and then paused. “Oh, uh, if that’s. I guess I should ask if that’s okay. Taking and posting pictures.”

“This is funny enough that I’ll allow it,” Jack said, taking the champagne and throwing his arm over Rhys’ shoulders. “It’s really petty, though, I gotta say. Personally, I prefer just shooting people I don’t like.”

“I know, I’m from Persephone, we’ve covered this,” Rhys said, grabbing his own champagne and nestling into Jack’s side. “Petty vengeance is practically part of my cultural heritage. Okay now kiss my neck and make sure you angle your face outward a little when you do it.”

Jack bit his neck tattoo with a little more force than was strictly necessary. Rhys pasted on a smile and took a series of pictures with the camera in his cybernetic palm.

“Wow, these look good,” he said as he reviewed them.

He opened up a new post in the group chat and added the best one.

“Hope everyone’s enjoying the long weekend!” he typed. “I know I am. ;) See you all on Monday, bright and early! #pouroneoutforlionel #riptheodorelol”

Rhys hit the post button and closed the window, letting out a sigh of satisfaction as he leaned back against Jack’s arm.

“Okay, you can go back to whatever you were doing now,” he said.

“Nah, it can wait,” Jack said. “This is romantic as hell.”

Rhys abruptly realized that it was, and that he and Jack were very naked and very close, the candlelight dancing off their skin and the heady scent of lavender filling the air. He blushed. Jack laughed.

“Take off your arm,” he said.

Rhys bit his lip but sat up and complied. Jack stood up out of the tub, taking Rhys’ cybernetic arm and placing it gently on a nearby towel. He pressed a button on the wall and the blank surface slid away, revealing a floor-to-ceiling window that gazed out at the rest of Helios.

“Can people see in here?” Rhys asked nervously.

“The other side’s mirrored,” Jack said as he got back in the tub. “I’m into other people’s one hundred percent deserved adoration of my person, but not that into it.”

Rhys looked out at the other side of Helios and its twinkling lights, like stars themselves against the backdrop of space. If he looked closely, he could almost see movement as the employees of Hyperion went on about their lives.

“Hang on a second,” he said suddenly. “How can you say you have the station’s penthouse if Helios has two towers of the same height?”

“They’re not,” Jack said. “The other one’s shorter.”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, I had them make it one floor shorter so I could have the penthouse,” Jack said.

“Are – I can’t believe you had the nerve to call me petty,” Rhys said.

“Well, I wasn’t about to let some chump run around saying he lived opposite me, was I?” Jack said.

“You’re ridiculous,” Rhys laughed. He looked back out at Helios, the bee hive, constantly humming, all of it beneath Jack. Literally, apparently. “I was thinking the other day what it would have been like, if I had come to work here coming out of undergrad instead of – instead of going back for a doctorate. I really don’t think you would’ve given me the time of day. I would’ve just been another faceless Hyperion drone.”

Jack hummed thoughtfully and started playing with loose strand of Rhys’ hair. He looked like he was imagining it.

“I’m glad I didn’t meet you four years ago,” Jack said seriously. “I probably would’ve killed you, to be honest.”

“What, because I yawned at you?” Rhys asked in surprised.

Jack snorted. “No, that was cute. No, uh,” Jack looked askance. “I would’ve liked you. And I would’ve hated liking you.”

Rhys thought about that. He wondered that he wasn’t more afraid.

“You saying you like me?” he asked, dropping his head to rest against his arm on the tub’s edge.

Jack tugged gently on Rhys’ earlobe. “Fish a little harder,” he said.

“Okay,” Rhys said. “What do you like about me?”

Jack’s fingers fell to trace the edge of Rhys’ jaw, his eyes following the movement with intense focus.

“Your bangin’ bod,” he said after a moment. “Obviously.”

Rhys smiled. “Liar,” he accused.

“Are you saying you don’t think you have a bangin’ bod?” Jack asked. “Because –”

Rhys cut him off with a kiss which Jack enthusiastically returned.

*

 

Eventually kissing in the tub graduated to grinding graduated to Rhys complaining about his skin pruning and Jack pulling him up and into the bedroom, pausing to let Rhys reattach his arm along the way. Jack grabbed the lube and a condom from where he had left both on top of the bedside table.

“Two condoms,” Rhys said.

Jack paused. “Listen, Rhys, babe, sweetheart,” he said slowly. “Handsome Jack is more of a giver than –”

“One, please stop referring to yourself in the third person,” Rhys interrupted. “Two, your fragile masculinity is noted –” Jack made a sound of affront that Rhys ignored. “– but I really just don’t want you to wipe cum off on me again. Give me a condom.”

Jack rolled his eyes but tossed Rhys a packet anyway.

They wound up lying on the bed, legs tangled so close it would’ve been a chore to tell them apart. Jack had two fingers buried deep in Rhys and they slowly rutted against each other’s thighs, content to lay there kissing and feeling the press of skin against skin. That is, until Jack’s fingers curled just right, Rhys felt his cock jolt, and he decided he was ready for more.

He climbed up onto his knees to straddle Jack, gripping his cock and guiding it toward his entrance. Jack smiled broadly as he watched, settling his hands on Rhys’ thighs without placing any pressure.

“I think this might be illegal,” he said. “It’s gotta be.”

“Why?” Rhys asked with a laugh.

“Because it’s too fucking good not to be,” Jack said. “Anyway, if it’s not, I’m outlawing it on Helios immediately. Nobody’s allowed to see this. I’ll gouge their friggin’ eyes out.”

He let out a groan as Rhys seated himself fully on Jack’s cock.

“Doesn’t that include you?” Rhys asked.

“I’m above the law,” Jack said dismissively. “Who the hell’s gonna gouge my eyes out?”

“Maybe I will,” Rhys said.

He started to move slowly, twisting his hips gently. Jack’s hands swept up to toy with his nipples and Rhys’ eyes fluttered half-shut in a haze of ecstasy. He reached out to hold onto Jack’s arms, using them as anchors as he increased his pace.

“Someday I’m gonna tie you up and ride you just like this,” he said. “Just use you the way I want, not let you have a thing I don’t give you.”

He expected Jack to protest or get indignant in response. What he didn’t expect was the sudden wicked grin he flashed, punctuated by a sharp upward thrust of his hips that made Rhys suck in a gasp.

“Yeah, I like the idea of that,” Jack said. “Watch you squirm and try to get off while I don’t lift a finger to help. Make you work for it. Make you beg me to touch you.”

“Oh my god, shut up,” Rhys complained. “This is my power fantasy. You can have yours later.”

Jack snickered. “How ‘bout we compromise,” he said, sitting up to get leverage so that he could work his hips upward to meet Rhys. “Let’s both fantasize later. And for now, just live in the moment.”

Rhys had a witty retort on the tip of his tongue, a “now I see why they let you be CEO,” but then Jack was kissing him, smothering it out of him with lips and tongue and teeth, and by the time they broke for air, Rhys couldn’t think of much anything at all.

In the afterglow, Rhys found himself sprawled out on top of Jack, eyes closed, only half-awake. He didn’t know how Jack could be comfortable with all of Rhys jabbing into him, especially his cybernetic arm, but he didn’t seem to mind the weight. He was carding one hand through Rhys’ hair again.

_He likes to play with my hair_ , Rhys thought drowsily.

He remembered Jack saying, “tactile,” and felt a small thrill, like he had learned a secret that was only his now. Something he could take out and turn over in his hand whenever he desired. A worry stone. _Tactile_. He wondered if even Jack knew.

“Rhys,” Jack said.

Rhys kept his eyes shut, but hummed to indicate that he was listening.

“You should drop out of school and do this full time.”

“What, nap?” Rhys asked.

That actually sounded pretty good. Even if he wasn’t really a student.

“No, have sex with me.”

Rhys opened one eye and peered up at him. The playful grin on Jack’s face was enough to tell Rhys he wasn’t being serious, but there was something dangerously fond in it, too. Rhys felt his heart skip a beat and he buried his face back in Jack’s chest to conceal whatever terrible thing it had started doing.

“My mother warned me about men like you,” he said.

“Yeah? What’d Momma Rhys say?”

“If he asks you to sign a pre-nup, run.”

Jack’s loud, startled laugh shook Rhys into a wide smile of his own.

“Okay,” Jack said, “but if you try to take Butt Stallion in the divorce, we’re having words.”

“Ugh, you can keep it,” Rhys said, and let the steady rise and fall of Jack’s breathing lull him to sleep. 

* 

The silence in the group chat following Saturday night was a level of vindication previously unknown to man. Two people had liked Rhys’ post – Benson and Ines, the woman who had reminded everyone that Amy had murdered a man.

The total radio silence from everyone else could have been bottled and sold as a narcotic.

On Sunday an official mail went out announcing what everyone had pretty much already suspected – that Dr. Jane’s injuries were too severe to allow her to return to work for the time being and that until further notice her team would be subsumed under Dr. Headland as he began his varkid research. Work was to resume on Monday, not in Genetics, but up on the primary Astrozoology Research floor.

If Rhys had expected Dr. Headland to be pleased by this turn of events, he was wrong.

The other lab assistants avoided Rhys like the plague when he arrived, coffees in hand for both Benson and Ines, but Dr. Headland glared at him with nearly enough intensity to kill. Rhys frowned and handed the coffees to a surprised and delighted Benson, then quickly approached Dr. Headland.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“Is something _wrong_?” Dr. Headland hissed. “We were all nearly killed last Wednesday, what do you _think_?”

Rhys thought that he was overreacting a little, given that he had been unconscious for almost all of it. Dr. Headland grabbed Rhys’ arm and dragged him off to the side, away from the others. 

“Tell me you’ve made progress,” he said.

“Progress?” Rhys repeated dumbly.

“Don’t play stupid,” Dr. Headland said. His grip on Rhys’ elbow tightened. “You know what I mean. I want off this death trap as soon as possible. Are you close to getting what we need?”

Rhys sucked in a breath and looked around the room in alarm, but no one was watching their exchange. Even Benson had wandered away to deliver Ines her coffee. She was blushing slightly. That was kind of cute.

“Rhys,” Dr. Headland said lowly, drawing his attention back.

“I’m…I’m working on it,” Rhys demurred. “It’s taking some time, okay? It’s not like it’s easy.”

Dr. Headland eyed him for a beat, and then released his arm. “Hurry up,” he said. “Every hour spent here adds more risk. Finish the job, before Handsome Jack, or something worse, finishes _us_.”

He turned and stormed away, leaving Rhys standing alone, a dense pit of dread coalescing in his gut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *rhys voice* "oh, ariana, we're really in it now."
> 
> i don't know how but this fic is flying out of my fingers at unprecedented speeds. we'll see if i can keep it up through the home stretch.
> 
> thank you for all your comments and kudos! i love seeing them. as before, any kind of feedback you might have is appreciated.


	4. Chapter 4

 

A few days later, Jack showed Rhys the solarium.

Because the station had no real atmosphere, it was dangerous to be exposed to the system’s sun without artificial filters. The windows throughout Helios were heavily treated to protect the inhabitants from radiation and burning. It was only in the solarium, with its crystal-like, opaque panes that you could actually, safely feel the warmth of sunlight on your skin.

There was greenery all over the station, carefully tended by maintenance robots into perfect geometric shapes, but the solarium had more. A nearly overwhelming amount, in fact. It was less of a greenhouse and more of a botanical garden, complete with a huge stone water feature of Jack pouring purple tinted water from a vault key like some kind of douchey nymph. Crawling vines clambered up the walls and along wood trellises, colorful flower plots were navigable by meandering cobblestone paths, and a small copse of trees offered shade to a cluster of wrought-iron bistro tables. A nearby stand sold ice cream and corndogs. There was even a sprawling lawn consisting of real green grass the likes of which Rhys hadn’t seen since he’d left Persephone.

And at some point between taking off his shoes so that he could feel it under his bare feet, Jack teasing him mercilessly about his star-patterned socks, Rhys ripping up grass to throw at him, and Jack shouting, “That handful cost me a thousand dollars! Stop throwing my own money at me!” Rhys suddenly realized that he was, for once, happy. Jack made him happy.

It was almost more of a shock to Rhys’ system than any other thing he had experienced so far on Helios. It was far and away the most pleasant. But it was a fragile kind of happiness, too, one that was under constant threat of collapse.

Whenever Jack looked at his ECHO, Rhys felt an uncomfortable twinge. Then Jack would look up and give him an exaggerated once over, or roll his eyes, or – worst of all – grin or smirk or _smile_ , and the twinge would turn into a sharp stab, would smooth out into a rolling, easy pleasure that it simple to forget. Rhys would turn his face toward the light, close his eyes to feel its touch, and pretend he wasn’t bare inches from being incinerated.

Sometimes Rhys felt that Tediore had been an awful nightmare that he had suddenly woken from. Other times he felt that Jack was some kind of hazy dream, that he was drifting through it all like a cloud or a blimp, untethered. The only time he felt remotely real was at work, and that was because everybody there hated him.

It was hard to tell which reason was the most common. Jealousy was chief among them – and was by far the most palatable – swiftly followed by embarrassment, but honest disdain was an uncomfortable third. Not all the lab assistants had been involved in the shit talk on the group chat, but all of them had seen his response, and very few were pleased with it. The general opinion among the serious scientists in the group seemed to be that Rhys was a smug braggart who didn’t deserve his job and who used his apparent relationship with the CEO to get away with being an asshole.

Rhys was fine with alienating his insufferable colleagues. He’d never intended to form close bonds of comradery with any of these people. He was less fine with the dark looks and abruptly ended conversations that happened when he walked into a room, especially given what had happened with Amy. The Hyperion employees of Helios were not to be underestimated. He’d started to watch his back pretty carefully in the labs, and never ate or drank anything he hadn’t opened himself.

Rhys’ only ally was Benson, who was great for a thumbs up and a sorry-looking frown, but not for much of anything else. He seemed sympathetic, but also totally unwilling to stick his own neck out for a guy he’d known for less than a month. Plus, he spent most of his time hanging around Ines now, and his interaction with Rhys was limited mostly to waved hellos in the mornings, and goodbyes in the afternoons. Rhys tried not to resent him for it. There wasn’t much Benson could’ve done, anyway.

Ines – a willowy, dark-skinned woman who was taller even than Rhys – might have served as an additional ally except that her true loyalties turned out to lie exclusively with brutal honesty.

“What you did was pretty funny,” she said in their first real conversation, “but they were kind of right about the boots. Also, you can be kind of a jerk sometimes. Sorry. Thanks for the coffee, though!”

Rhys wondered if there wasn’t a single thing in his life that he hadn’t fucked up utterly.

Dr. Headland appeared to wonder the same thing. He’d taken to barking orders at Rhys left and right, sending him first to fetch supplies and then immediately to return them. He delighted in giving Rhys busy work and impossible tasks, only to later nitpick and criticize the results.

In one horrible exercise, he sent Rhys back down to Genetics to fetch a data drive that had been left behind. The data drive turned out to actually be property of another Genetics team, far above Rhys’ clearance, and in the possession of a scientist named Dr. Nakayama who, between heavy breaths, threatened to turn Rhys into an experiment himself. He was also drinking out of a coffee mug that had Jack’s face in a large heart on it. Rhys wasn’t sure whose eyes to keep contact with. The whole exchange was massively creepy on several different levels.

When Rhys returned to Dr. Headland to explain what had happened, he was yelled at for an unbearable thirty minutes. Rhys was unable to risk even reaching up to wipe Dr. Headland’s spittle off his cheek, lest the thirty minutes turn into a full hour.

The rest of the week passed in a similar vein.

Jack took Rhys back down to the gun range and tried to teach him to use a shotgun. Rhys fell on his ass, made Jack laugh, and they made out like horny teenagers against the gun lockers. Someone deleted all the spreadsheets Rhys had been working on while he was taking a bathroom break one afternoon and he had to restart from scratch. Benson and Ines’ flirting shot past ‘cute’ and landed in ‘sickening,’ just short of ‘totally insensitive to the suffering of others.’ Dr. Headland cornered Rhys in a hallway and asked him if he had a death wish and then offered to provide one. Rhys spent one hard to remember hour sitting on the floor of his apartment, staring despondently into space. Jack sent Rhys a dick pic during a morning meeting. Rhys responded with a picture of his middle finger and wished that he could call his mother, because clearly he needed an adult.

Clearly, he needed _something_.

The weekend arrived and Rhys once again found himself laid out on his couch watching _As Promethea Burns_ and feeling sorry for himself.

“That’s right!” Barbara yelled on screen. “I’ve been able to walk the _whole time!_ ”

She leapt up out of her wheelchair and roundhouse kicked Jasmine’s lover in the sternum, sending him flying through a nearby window.

“Why did you do that?” Jasmine cried. “Vincent’s been nothing but kind to you!”

“Vincent?” Barbara said. “That wasn’t your husband, Yannis?”

Barbara’s butler gasped.

“She didn’t need the wheelchair,” he said, “but the _blindness was real!_ ”

The show cut dramatically to an advertisement for Handsome Jack Hair Gel – “For that authentic windswept look! Remember: Not everyone can be great, but for only forty Helios credits, you can at least be good looking!”

Rhys picked up one of the couch’s pillows and tried to suffocate himself with it, but mostly only succeeded in getting lint in his mouth.

The doorbell rang, interrupting his half-hearted attempt to end it all, and he slouched toward the door with a pretty good idea of who was behind it. It wasn’t like he had a ton of friends and would-be callers on Helios.

“Wow, look what the skag dragged in,” Jack said as Rhys answered. “What’s got you looking so miserable, sweetheart? Need me to shoot someone? You know I’m always up for a revenge killing.”

“I’m not really in the mood today, Jack,” Rhys said.

Jack frowned. “Hey, what’s the matter?” he asked.

Rhys shrugged evasively. It wasn’t like he could tell the truth.

“Okay,” Jack said, and pushed his way into the apartment. “Ugh, you live in a shoebox. No wonder you’re depressed. It’s like hanging a masterpiece in the bathroom.”

Rhys reluctantly felt himself start to smile.

“So, talk to me,” Jack said. “What’s up?”

Rhys examined Jack’s expression. He was serious, attentive. Something tight and heavy unknotted itself in Rhys’ chest.

“It’s nothing, I was just being stupid,” Rhys said.

“Don’t get shy on me all of a sudden,” Jack said. “I might at least find it funny.”

Rhys glared at him without much heat, chewed on the inside of his cheek, and then asked, “Have you ever wanted something you couldn’t have?”

“’Couldn’t’ and ‘can’t’ are strong words that I prefer to ignore,” Jack said. “What do you want? I bet I could get it for you. Money is no object.”

“A time machine,” Rhys said.

“Ah,” Jack said. “I’ll have to keep you posted on that one, but I’ll get my best people working on it ASAP.”

Rhys smiled and leaned forward to rest his forehead against Jack’s shoulder. Jack raised a hand to pat him on the back of his head.

“I like you, Handsome Jack,” Rhys said.

“You and everyone else,” Jack said.

“Nope,” Rhys said. “Just me.”

Jack huffed. “Whatever you say.”

“Why did you come down here, anyway?” Rhys asked, straightening back up.

“No real reason. I had to drop by Tourism for a thing and got curious about how people who aren’t me live. Thought it’d be more fun to come here than to just burst in on some schmobody. Although that also would’ve been pretty fun. Can you imagine what the reaction would’ve been? They probably would’ve shit themselves.” Jack cackled and then headed further in to look around Rhys’ apartment with open interest. “Gotta say, this is about as sad as I expected, tangible miasma of despair included. Oh, you really do have a ficus.”

“Why would I lie about that?” Rhys asked.

“I can’t believe you watch this garbage,” Jack said, having already moved on to the screen playing _As Promethea Burns_.

“It’s not garbage, it’s a riveting interpersonal drama with themes of love and war set against a vivid backdrop of untamed space and alien wilderness,” Rhys defended.

“But Vincent, how did you survive the fall?” Jasmine gasped, hurrying to his side.

“The truth is, my love…” Vincent said, ripping open his shirt to reveal a steel plate where his torso should’ve been. “I’m a cyborg!”

Jasmine let out a scream of anguish.

“Oh no,” Rhys said quietly. To Jack he explained, “Cyborgs killed her mother when she was a child. She has trauma.”

Jack raised an unimpressed eyebrow.

“You need to learn what real cinema looks like,” he said, picking up the remote and changing the channel.

He’d flipped it to some kind of action movie. There was a massive explosion and then a man on a motorcycle came flying out of it, a scantily clad woman tucked under one arm and a huge shotgun held in the other (surely that couldn’t be a stable way to drive). The motorcycle screeched to a halt and there was a close up on the man’s face. It was Handsome Jack.

Except it clearly wasn’t. It was a buff man with a square jaw and a strong nose with makeup on that made it look like he had clasps and the line of a mask. He stood up and set the woman down. She immediately swooned and fell out of the shot.

“Looks like I,” the fake Jack said, cocking the shotgun, “was just in the Jack of time.”

Rhys had to slap a hand over his mouth to keep from laughing.

“Who’s that playing you and how do I trade up?” he snickered from between his fingers.

Jack scowled and turned the screen off.

“TV melts your brain, anyway,” he said. “Guess what always cheers me up, though! I’ll give you a hint, it starts with an ‘M.’”

“…Murder?” Rhys guessed nervously.

“Close!” Jack said. “Good try! But the one I was looking for in this specific instance was, ‘moonshots.’ Want to go fire shit out of a cannon that’s almost as big as my dick?”

“…I’m trying really, really hard not to use the opening you just gave me,” Rhys said. “It’s painful but I feel like I have to give you a pass after ‘just in the Jack of time.’”

“As long as you never expect me to do the same for you,” Jack said. “Put some shoes on and grab a coat. We have to go out to the Eye for this.”

* 

The Eye’s command center was located at the very middle of Helios, surrounded by cargo bays filled with loader bots and mechanics. Most travel out of Helios was done via shuttles that docked closer to the Hub of Heroism in impressive landings, carefully adorned to introduce newcomers to the power and awe of Hyperion and Handsome Jack. The Eye had no such function, and was all bare efficiency.

The vast, open hangars were nearly freezing, but the moonshot controls were located in an enclosed room high up above, with large windows on all sides. It faced Elpis, but at the press of a button the windows to the left flickered and a display of Pandora was projected against the glass. The right bank became a close up of the moonshot cannon itself, filled with enormous, yellow bullet-shaped containers.

“Okay, what should we load into this baby?” Jack asked. “Feel free to really get creative. I generally stick to loader bots, because then it’s like the big can of death crashes down and splits open to reveal lots of little cans of death, but high-grade explosives are also a solid choice.”

“You ever think about, like, not killing people for a day?” Rhys asked. “Just to see how it feels?”

“I already know about your dumb murder hang-up, Rhys,” Jack said in exasperation. “We don’t have to kill anyone with it, alright? I did say you can get creative. Load it with glitter for all I care. Might take a while to find that much glitter, but it’d be super funny to bust it open right over New Haven. That bitch Lilith would be trying to get it out of her stupid looking side-bangs for months. And Pandora’s not only inhabited by human beings. We could – as a completely random example – smash the ever-loving crap out of a varkid colony. If you’re looking for suggestions.”

“That does sound satisfying…” Rhys said slowly. “And you just happen to have the coordinates for one of those?”

“Pft, of course I do,” Jack said. “I know about everything that goes on down there. A skag so much as vomits in the badlands and I get a ten-page report on what it had for breakfast. It’s a given that I have the exact location of a secluded varkid colony covering about an acre of otherwise unpopulated mountainside. What do you take me for?”

“Uh-huh,” Rhys grinned.

“C’mere,” Jack said with a wave.

Rhys came closer and let Jack pull him under one arm, smacking a kiss onto Rhys’ cheek as he did so.

“So, what’s it gonna be?” Jack asked.

“Explosives,” Rhys said confidently. “It has to be thorough.”

“Atta boy,” Jack said, slapping him on the back. “One moonshot full of ‘fuck you, six-legs’ coming right up.”

He began typing on the control panel. A siren sounded twice out in the hangar and movement picked up around the moonshot cannon as forklifts and loader bots hefted pallets of cargo to-and-fro. They worked quickly and efficiently, likely used to being called on for emergencies. It wasn’t long before a green light appeared on the moonshot console, indicating that the bullet was ready to fire.

“Just a sec, the satellite’s still not in position,” Jack said, still typing.

“Satellite?” Rhys asked.

“There’s no point in putting a massive crater in the planet’s surface in an attempt to drag a species one step closer toward extinction if you don’t get to see it, is there?” Jack said.

Another screen appeared, covering part of the view of the hangar. It was only satellite footage, so the image quality was poor at best, everything rendered in shades of green and ultra-low contrast. Rhys squinted at it, trying to make out among the static what he was seeing. Then he reared back as he realized that it wasn’t static at all.

“There’s thousands of them!” he said. “That’s disgusting! Look at them, crawling all over each other, dripping their horrible bug juice, and oh, ugh, I think I might be sick. This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

As he stared in horror, Rhys suddenly felt something brush against the exposed back of his neck. He jumped, shrieked, and slapped a hand over it, only to turn and see Jack snickering, hand still halfway raised.

“Don’t do that!” Rhys snapped.

“But you make it so easy,” Jack said. He wiggled his fingers menacingly.

“I changed my mind, I want to put _you_ in the moonshot,” Rhys said. “See how funny you think it is then.”

“Too late!” Jack declared. “I’ll let you do the honors, though.”

He gestured toward a large red button on the console. Rhys thought that had probably been an intentional design choice. Not that he was complaining. He reached out and pressed it.

The siren blared once again, and then there was a roaring sound as the moonshot was fired. The enormous bullet was propelled toward Pandora at a nearly unfathomable speed. Rhys watched it cross the screen on which Pandora was displayed, like a comet streaking past, and then, in an instant, it was crashing down into the satellite footage, sending varkids and the wet parts of varkids scattering.

Then it exploded.

The satellite feed cracked and fizzed before refocusing on the burning wreckage of the colony. It took a few minutes for the smoke to dissipate enough for anything to be visible. There wasn’t much left to look at. The varkid colony had, true to Jack’s prediction, been turned into a massive crater in the ground.

“I do feel a lot better now,” Rhys admitted, staring at the smoldering hole where a nightmare hellscape had been only seconds before.

“I should totally send that footage to Dr. Moist,” Jack said. “You think he’ll get a kick out of it?”

“Ohhhh my god no no no do not do that,” Rhys said. “He’d make my life miserable, more miserable than it already it is, oh my god.”

“He’s making your life miserable?” Jack asked sharply.

“No,” Rhys said quickly.

Jack’s eyes narrowed.

“He’s my boss,” Rhys tried. “Everyone’s boss makes their life miserable. That’s what a boss does. I know you don’t have one anymore, but you must know what I’m talking about.”

Jack made a face of understanding and stopped looking quite so murderous.

“I did strangle my last boss to death,” he said. “Just a suggestion.”

“If I strangle Dr. Headland, I probably won’t get any college credits,” Rhys joked.

“Hm,” Jack said. “You’re really gonna follow through with it, then? Getting your degree?”

Rhys looked away, out toward Elpis.

“It’s obvious you don’t want to,” Jack said. “You hate this stuff so much, babe. You just gleefully exploded a whole-ass city of the things you’re supposed to be studying." 

“What else can I do?” Rhys mumbled. “At this point I don’t have a choice.”

Jack crossed his arms and looked out at Elpis as well.

“Take it from me,” he said seriously. “You always have a choice.”

Rhys had to bite down on his tongue to keep from yelling.

“Hey, quit it,” Jack said, catching his expression. “I’m not trying to make you do anything you don’t want to. It’s just a drag seeing you all worked up. Well, like this. I like seeing you worked up, when it’s me who’s doing the working.”

Rhys rolled his eyes but released his tongue.

“I’ll think about it,” he promised after a moment, as if they were even remotely having the same conversation.

As if he hadn’t thought about it, and hated the conclusions he had come to. He didn’t want to think about it anymore. He just wanted to be here, bathed in moonlight, Jack standing at his side.

Rhys turned and tugged gently on the lapel of Jack’s jacket, forcing him to uncross his arms again, and then kissed him softly on the lips. There was a split-second pause before Jack caught on, and then the kiss deepened. 

Rhys reached up to brush his fingers across Jack’s face, feeling the ridge of his cheekbone under his fingertips. He traced it carefully, following it slowly up toward his ear. His fingers slipped across some fine line in Jack’s skin and Rhys’ progress stuttered as he suddenly remembered the mask. Fascinated and curious, his hand paused there, pressed against the place where Jack’s face met his Face.

It was only for a breath, a fraction of a second’s hesitation, but that was enough. Jack reared back, snatching Rhys’ wrist in a bruising grip and shoving him harshly back against the console with a thud.

“Don’t _ever_ touch that,” he snarled.

Rhys gaped at him. “I-I’m sorry – I didn’t – I wasn’t –” His heart hammered in his chest.

Jack leaned toward him sharply and Rhys flinched and ducked his head in submission.

As though he himself had been struck, Jack suddenly released Rhys’ wrist. His took a quick step backward. Rhys kept his eyes trained on the floor, shoulders hunched around his ears.

“I just – forgot it was there, and –” Rhys began again.

One of Jack’s hands reached out and touched Rhys’ chin, tilting his face back upward. Rhys glanced at him and was surprised to see that Jack no longer looked angry. He was frowning, brows drawn together tightly, but he was searching Rhys’ face in distraction

“Sorry,” he grunted. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Rhys blinked owlishly at him. He couldn’t remember Jack ever apologizing for anything before, not to him or anyone else.

“I wouldn’t,” Jack said, then paused nervously. “I wouldn’t hurt you, Rhys.”

Rhys’ lips parted slightly.

“You wouldn’t?” he asked, awed.

Jack’s brows furrowed further. His hand dropped from Rhys’ chin and he ran it through his own hair instead, mussing it out of its perfect coif. His eyes slid away from Rhys’ and toward some indefinite spot beyond him.

Another siren blared distantly out in the hangar.

“Let’s not do this here,” Jack said. “Come on, let’s go back to my place.”

* 

The trip up to Jack’s penthouse was quiet, Rhys keeping his distance, not sure what to do or say. Jack hardly seemed to notice him, a dark set to his features as he mechanically went through the motions of calling the elevator and opening the front door. In the dimly lit living room, Elpis seemed to loom closer than it had down in the Eye, although of course that wasn’t possible. Its cracked and eerie face pressed up against the glass with a fixed, unblinking gaze.

“I really am sorry, Jack,” Rhys said quietly, gripping one arm with his other hand awkwardly. “I know it doesn’t make it better, but…”

Jack crossed to stand in front of the window, back to Rhys, only one thin, pale strip of his face visible. His shoulders were tense as he looked at the moon.

“When I lost my arm,” Rhys pressed on, “before I got a cybernetic prosthetic, I hated the way people looked at me. Without even thinking about it, they would stare, like they couldn’t help seeing what was wrong with me. I’m not…saying it’s the same, or that there’s something wrong, I don’t know, but I guess…I know what it’s like to not want people to look. That’s all.”

“I’m not mad at you,” Jack said.

“Really?” Rhys asked shakily. “Because you seem kind of. Mad.”

Jack remained silent. Then, suddenly, his hands were reaching up toward his face. They rested there for a beat, and then came away, holding the mask.

Rhys’ heart stuttered and had to work to resume its normal pace. He could just see the edges of it – thin and flesh-colored, one clasp exposed. His brain raced to catch up with what was happening.

Jack began to turn. Instinctively, Rhys looked away.

“Rhys,” Jack said. “It’s okay. You can look.”

Rhys’ eyes darted first to Jack’s shoulder, and then up slowly to his exposed face. He sucked in a breath that didn’t quite make it to his lungs as he saw the huge, blue scar that cut across Jack’s skin. Its long arm perfectly bisected one white, sightless eye. The other returned Rhys’ gaze stonily. Seeing what, he didn’t know. 

“How…?” Rhys said, taking an involuntary step forward.

“I got punched in a vault by a siren.”

“Wh-what?” Rhys stuttered. “You…who…what?”

Jack’s lips quirked slightly. He looked down at the mask in his hands and seemed to decide something, because when he looked up again, he was resolved.

“Tell me, Rhys,” Jack said. “What would you do if you suddenly knew everything – everything you could possibly want to know, and in it you saw a way to become a god. Would you take it?”

Rhys swallowed. “Who wouldn’t?”

“No matter the cost?”

Rhys didn’t know what to say to that.

“Four years ago,” Jack said, “I stood in a vault on Elpis and was given a vision. I saw the future. I saw the path – to greatness, to power, to absolute control. It was,” Jack exhaled harshly, “ _glorious_. But when Lilith punched me, I saw something else. I saw what I’d have to lose to get it. My daughter.”

 _Angel_ , Rhys recalled. The picture on the desk. The conspicuously absent child.

“For a while, I thought I could ignore it,” Jack said. “That it didn’t matter. There was nothing I wouldn’t give up for greatness. I killed Tassiter. I put on this mask and became Handsome Jack. I finished Helios and turned to Pandora. Then I turned to Angel. I needed her, you see. She was essential. There was no way to get what I wanted without the use of her powers. The powers of a siren.”

Rhys’ ears rang with a funny buzzing sound, numb and shrill as he tried to process what he was hearing. Vaults. Sirens. Angel. Jack’s face, cut viciously with the vault symbol, so perfect in its arc that it almost looked like Jack was the mar, not the other way around.

Jack watched him carefully for a moment, as though waiting for something. For Rhys to run screaming, maybe. Whatever it was, it never came. His hands tightened in their grip around the mask.

Roughly, he went on, “Angel was. Not afraid. She’d been afraid of me before, and I’d never cared. But she was resigned. Tired. She’d given up on me. To her, I’d already crossed the line in the sand. To her, it was over. She may as well have already been the corpse from my vision. I could see it in her eyes, without her ever having to say a word. It wasn’t like she ever said anything other than, ‘Yes, Jack,’ anyway.

“I…love her. I’ve always loved her. But for a long time, I only loved her as an object, a useful tool. A thing. When she looked at me like that, totally devoid of hope and affection, I knew it wasn’t really love. It was…ownership. It was love the way a – a grandmother drowns her grandkid’s pet cat and calls it discipline. It was. Smothering and false. Destructive. Apocalyptic. Hate, I think.

“So, no, I wouldn’t hurt you, Rhys,” Jack concluded after a beat. “I’ve already done enough of that for one lifetime. I’m not a good man, by any means. But I’m not that, either. Not anymore.”

Rhys stood there, reeling. He tried to think of something to say, but it all felt inadequate.

“Your daughter…Angel…where is she now?” he asked at last.

“Dunno,” Jack admitted. “After that, I couldn’t do it anymore. Any of it. I let Angel go. I gave up on the vaults, promised myself I’d never chase after them or her again. I mean, I’m still up here mining eridium and selling weapons and laying waste to my enemies, but I’d crossed one line in the sand and I had to draw another. One that was a little more final. She prefers it that way, I think. I call her sometimes, but she never picks up. The only reason I even know she’s alive is because I still get received notifications on all my messages.”

Jack paused.

“It’s funny,” he said, even though it wasn’t funny at all. “I used to think being a hero was all about rushing into action, chasing danger, chasing the prize. I thought what made you a hero was choosing to take what you wanted, to fight for it, to break down every obstacle in your path. But that’s not it, or not all of it, anyway. Sometimes…sometimes being a hero is just choosing not to be the villain.”

Rhys closed his eyes. A deep and steady calm came over him. It settled in his bones. When he opened them again, both Jack and Elpis were still looking at him, two scarred and watchful faces. Wary. Immense.

Rhys looked down at the mask still clutched tightly in Jack’s hands.

“May I?” Rhys asked, holding his own hand out.

Jack hesitated, and then gave it to him.

Rhys took it gently. He looked down at the cold, emotionless piece of plastic, and thought how different it seemed now, how lifeless and fragile. He traced the line of the cheekbone with his finger, as he had down in the moonshot control center. He traced the ridges of the lips. These were the lips he had kissed what felt like a thousand times, but had probably only been a dozen. Slowly, he raised the mask, and kissed them again. They were soft and unresponsive. It felt unfamiliar. Strange.

Jack inhaled sharply, a barely audible sound that nonetheless cut through the heavy silence, drawing Rhys’ attention. He looked at Jack, at the scar, at the one dead eye and the other – wide with something raw and unguarded – and had a sudden thought.

It wasn’t an explosion. It wasn’t even a bang or a crash. It was barely a whisper, barely anything at all. It was everything.

He set the mask carefully on the nearby coffee table and leaned in to give Jack, his Jack, a kiss. It felt like the thousand and first. When he broke away, Jack was looking at him so softly it hurt.

 _I can’t do it,_ Rhys knew. _I can’t steal from this man._

*

There was a small window of time in Jack’s penthouse – a second or maybe even less – during which Rhys contemplated just telling the truth. It creaked open noisily, rattled around in Rhys’ throat, and nearly spilled out of his mouth without permission, until he reached back and slammed it shut with force.

 _I don’t have to do it_ , Rhys told himself. _And Jack never has to find out._

He tried to reason that it was just simpler like that. He’d find a way to get Dr. Headland to lay off and be content with his varkid research and Rhys and Jack could just go on as they were, as if nothing had happened. Rhys could ‘drop out of school.’ He could call his parents and feed them some story. He could stay on Helios and everything would be fine and no one would have to get hurt.

But it wasn’t that he thought it would be simple. It was that Rhys was afraid.

What would Jack do if he learned the truth? Rhys was a spy. He was a liar. He was a thief. And Jack had just exposed himself in the most extreme way possible. Wasn’t that betrayal enough?

Maybe he had said he wouldn’t hurt Rhys, but that was because he had no idea who Rhys actually was. Rhys had seen him crush those he considered his enemies, knew he was capable of extreme violence, even knew that Jack had a tendency for holding grudges and taking revenge. What was to stop him from killing Rhys the moment all was revealed?

Would he even give Rhys a chance to explain himself, or would he pull the trigger first?

Worst of all was that Rhys was afraid of hurting Jack almost as much as he was of dying. He knew he couldn’t expect that Jack felt as deeply about Rhys as Rhys did about him, but there was no denying that he was attached. What would it do to him, to find out?

Rhys tried to imagine a scenario in which Jack was the one who was using him. He tried to picture it – this thing he felt being twisted and turned back on him like a knife. Even in his imagination, it was devastating. Rotten and twisted and horrible. The lowest of lows.

 _If I can spare him that, of course I should,_ Rhys decided.

Tediore would have to stay a secret. One he would take to his grave.

The only problem was Dr. Headland.

He tried to plan out what he would say in advance, but found it hard to find the right words. All he knew was that it would have to be a pretty convincing speech. Maybe it would be enough just to point out that if the plan was over and Rhys dropped the astrozoology act, Dr. Headland just wouldn’t have to put up with him anymore. He could only hope.

Rhys arrived at work on Monday with a steely resolve, breezing past his glaring coworkers without paying them any mind.

“I need to speak with you in private,” he said as he approached Dr. Headland.

Dr. Headland looked up from his microscope immediately, and then glanced around the room.

“My office,” he said, standing up.

Rhys followed him out of the lab and down the hall, past the breakroom. Dr. Headland’s office was still crammed with partially unpacked cardboard boxes filled with files and lab equipment, his desk overflowing with lopsided stacks of paper. The only signs of personality were a large diagram of a varkid hanging on one wall and a picture of a young, smiling couple sitting on the desk. Relatives, maybe. A son and his wife.

“What have you got?” Dr. Headland asked, locking the door behind them. He sounded excited.

“Oh, uh,” Rhys began awkwardly. “That’s not…what this is about.”

Dr. Headland’s expression shuttered. His jaw clenched.

“Listen,” Rhys said. “I’ve. Been giving this whole thing a lot of thought. And I just don’t think it’s a good idea.” He took a deep breath. “I think we should call it quits. You can do your whole varkid thing, and I can. Do other stuff. And that’s it.”

Dr. Headland was looking at him as though he had suddenly started speaking Truxican.

“Call it quits,” he parroted blankly.

“Yeah,” Rhys said. “Look, you know how dangerous it is. For the both of us. Neither of us wants to get killed. And.” He rubbed the back of his neck and looked away nervously. “So, like, Jack is an asshole and a narcissist and just pretty much an all-around terrible human being. No arguments here. I think he might actually be the worst person in the universe – he’s _definitely_ in the top ten. But, like, does he really deserve to be robbed like that? It just… it feels a little –”

“Does he _deserve_ –” Dr. Headland interrupted incredulously. “I knew you were a _layperson_ ,” he spat, as if this were an insult of the highest degree, “but I didn’t realize you were a complete moron!”

“Okay, just ignore that part,” Rhys said quickly. “The important thing was the rest of it. The…the ‘let’s just walk away and live’ thing.”

“ _There is no walking away!_ ” Dr. Headland said, voice raising in volume. “Do you seriously think Tediore will just shrug their shoulders, say, ‘Oh well! Lost that one!’ and let us go? Don’t be stupid!”

“Surely we can find a way to…to convince them –”

Rhys was cut off by Dr. Headland’s hand flying across his face. Rhys stumbled slightly, shocked, and then winced as he registered the pain. He raised his hand to touch his cheek where Dr. Headland had hit him in disbelief.

“ _Wake up!_ ” Dr. Headland yelled, face pale and terrified. “This isn’t a game, you idiot boy! You absolute child! They’ll want us _dead!_ And they won’t even have to try very hard, won’t have to hire an assassin or exert any effort at all! All they’ll have to do is _tell Handsome Jack!_ ”

It was Rhys’ turn to stare without comprehension.

He recalled, very suddenly, what Mrs. Tediore had said, that awful day in her office. Either he could be useful, or they could risk outsourcing his execution.

Dr. Headland was right. If Tediore caught on that Rhys wasn’t theirs anymore, they would simply tell Jack that he had been.

It didn’t matter what Rhys did or didn’t do – that had been a naïve dream.

Jack was going to find out.

“Do you have any idea what that lunatic will do to us?” Dr. Headland demanded. “He won’t just kill us, Rhys, he’ll destroy us! He’ll destroy our families! He’ll destroy everyone who so much as knows our names! He’ll do it slowly, and he’ll enjoy every second! Are you even listening to me? It’s not just your life on the line, Rhys. _Don’t make me beg you for mine_.”

Rhys swallowed, but his mouth had gone bone dry. He nodded.

“You’re right,” he rasped. “I’m sorry, Dr. Headland. Don’t worry. I’ll get it done.”

* 

Rhys sat in his apartment with the lights off, nothing to see by but the glow of his own arm. He stared into the darkness, willing it to transform into something solid and tangible and useful, and if not, then at least to swallow him whole. It did not respond.

He felt like he was somewhere far outside his body, looking down. If he tried, he could almost pretend that this was all happening to someone else, that he was nothing more than an onlooker with no particular interest in the outcome. It was almost funny, that way. Like some long comedy of errors that was finally drawing to a close.

Was this all his fault? Or was he just the butt of some huge cosmic joke? Somebody somewhere must be laughing, or else there was no justice in it at all. If it was all mere happenstance and coincidence and bad luck, he didn’t know if he could stand it for a second more.

He buried his face in his knees and tried to repress the urge to scream.

As much as he hated it, as much as he wanted to keep on pretending, as much as he wanted to yell and rage and fight, Dr. Headland was right. There was no walking away. Jack was going to find out. Whatever precious, fragile thing Rhys had found with him would be broken irreparably. And now Rhys only had two options: He could be on Helios when it happened, or he could be off of it.

He could live, or he could die.

Rhys clenched his fists and looked up, into the pressing, insistent dark.

He didn’t want to be a martyr. Even if it made him miserable, even if it ruined everything, he wanted to live. He wanted to survive. He would do his job and get his check from Tediore, and then he would quit and go home to Persephone and use the stupid fucking money to uproot his family and spend the rest of his life running the fuck away from Jack. Away from the man he loved.

It was the only choice he had.

And for that, he needed a plan.

* 

(And _this_ he could not say out loud, could barely form into words in the privacy of his own mind, it was so painful. He merely felt it, and knew that it was true: The worst part was, for a moment, Rhys had really thought he had a chance. That it had been real. That he was going to win. The worst part was, if he had lost something, it was only because he had been dumb enough to trick himself into believing it was his in the first place.)

*

Rhys already had everything he needed. The plan fell together so quickly and easily that it was obvious to an unbearable extent how hard he had been working to avoid it. He had wasted weeks on breaking his own heart.

There were two places on Helios that could be used to get the information Tediore wanted – the study in Jack’s penthouse and the computer in his office. Rhys had access to the penthouse, but the study was further secured by both a palm print and a retina scan. Those could possibly be hacked, but it would be difficult, especially if Jack was just down the hall the entire time.

The office, on the other hand, was secured by the same forcefield used to protect the vault key, as Jack himself had told him. At first blush, that seemed impossible to get around, but it could actually be bypassed through much easier means – by use of Jack’s ID card. The ID card he carried with him everywhere he went.

Rhys’ plan was this: He would have sex with Jack. While Jack was distracted, he would snag the ID card and tuck it away. Once Jack was asleep, Rhys would retrieve the ID card and slip down to Jack’s office where he would use it to get inside. He’d have to hack Jack’s computer – there was no way around that – but he was confident in his skills. Even if Jack was a genius, Rhys had been hacking since he was twelve, with a fancy new eye and arm and a whole new world of possibilities. He’d find a way or make one.

After Rhys had found something, anything (he didn’t even care what, wouldn’t even pick something huge, just something big enough to satisfy Tediore and that was it), he would leave the office and go wake Dr. Headland who had their passports and the universal credits needed for shuttle passes out of the system. The two of them would get on a shuttle headed back to the Edens, hopping station to station to obscure the trail, until finally. At last.

It would be over.

* 

Rhys already had standing plans to meet Jack to watch movies at his place on Thursday night.

“That ‘just in the Jack of time’ thing was a fluke,” Jack said. “They make so many ECHOflicks about me I’ve got my own subgenre – Jacktion movies! Downside of that is there’s bound to be some duds mixed in with the gems. You win some, you lose some, what can I say? But lucky for you, I own all the best ones! I’m even in a few of them for real! Just wait, babe, you’re never gonna want to watch a shitty soap opera again in your life.”

Rhys very much doubted he’d want to watch ‘Jacktion movies’ either.

The good thing about a movie date was that it meant a dark room with no expectations for small talk, so it would be much easier to hide his extreme anxiety and misery. He was even able to force on a smile as Jack let him up into the penthouse, and, as always, it wasn’t hard to let Jack run away with the conversation on his own. He couldn’t quite manage to hide his stiffness, though.

“Is something wrong?” Jack asked, sinking down onto the couch next to Rhys with a big bowl of popcorn.

“Sorry,” Rhys said, shaking his head and uncrossing his arms. “I’ve just been thinking a lot. About school. And stuff.”

“What have you been thinking?” Jack asked.

Rhys bit his lip.

“It’s just a little longer,” he said, “and then I’ll have a doctorate. But I don’t have to ever use it again. I don’t have to be Dr. Rhys. I can just be Rhys.”

Jack ruffled his hair affectionately.

“You can still be Dr. Rhys in the bedroom, if you like,” he said. “We can do a full body examination.”

Rhys cracked a genuine smile at that, and shoved him playfully.

“There’s no cure for what you have,” he said.

“Guess you’ll just have to make me comfortable,” Jack said, giving an exaggerated sigh. “My last wish is to see you in a nurse outfit. With fishnets.”

“Nurses wear scrubs,” Rhys said. “I won’t even be that kind of doctor.”

“Nothing but a lab coat,” Jack corrected. “And fishnets.”

“And a microscope,” Rhys said, because Jack’s pass had expired. “So I can find your –”

“Shh, shh, shush, the movie’s starting,” Jack said, placing a hand over Rhys’ mouth. “You don’t want to miss the opening credits, they really set the tone for the rest of the plot.”

They truly did, but even if they hadn’t, it would have been difficult for Rhys to misunderstand any of what happened in the movie’s two and a half hour run time. It was pretty much the platonic ideal of B-movie action flicks, complete with an unnecessary and shoe-horned romance subplot featuring an attractive, baby-faced young man who spent the whole time either crying or being kidnapped.

Rhys probably would’ve found the experience weird if he’d had room in his body for anymore emotions. As it was, he merely sat there, barely taking it in, wondering how awful it would all seem in retrospect. Jack’s hand was slung over his shoulder, one thumb rubbing circles on Rhys’ arm. How badly would he regret that contact in the morning? Rhys nibbled at the popcorn without really tasting it and watched the love interest scream for Jack’s help as he was carried off by bandits once more.

Halfway through the second movie – nearly indistinguishable from the first – Rhys decided enough was enough and climbed into Jack’s lap. He didn’t even kiss him right away, just looked down and examined his masked face, committing every detail to memory. Years from now, he wanted to be able to close his eyes and remember the way Jack looked up at him, vaguely amused, a little smug, eyes glinting with some secret joke at the universe’s expense.

He wished he could see Jack without his mask again, but he was afraid to ask.

“Jack,” Rhys said quietly, “why would you think I care even a little bit about some actor playing you when I have the real thing right here?”

“You make a convincing argument,” Jack said, and pressed Rhys by the back of his neck into a kiss.

Rhys kissed him slowly, drawing out every touch, savoring each swipe of Jack’s tongue. Like a man dying of thirst, gulping down seawater, he kissed.

They probably would’ve fucked right there on the couch with the movie still playing in the background if there had been condoms and lube in the living room. Instead, Jack hefted Rhys up and carried him into the bedroom, Rhys’ legs still wrapped around his waist. Rhys could feel Jack’s shoulder and arm muscles tensing as they held him aloft and felt a thrill of lust and terror. But Jack set him down on the bed with gentleness to let him strip.

Rhys watched carefully, inconspicuously as Jack undressed. His heart leapt into his throat as Jack pulled the ID card out of his pocket, and then it plummeted like a brick when he opened the dresser drawer with a press of his palm against the surface and dropped it inside. He pulled out the condoms and lube and closed the drawer. It clicked as it relocked.

A spike of panic shot through Rhys and made him shudder. Jack must have thought it was desire, because he smirked.

How had Rhys never noticed that before? How stupid could he possibly be? He’d always been so consumed with Jack, with the sex, that he’d never paid attention to something so obvious as a palm print lock on the fucking bedside table. A series of emotions rushed through him so quickly he could barely process them – disbelief, fear, anger, grief, and then, at last, resignation.

He’d ruined it all. He was going to die.

Jack pressed him into the mattress. It was a wonder that Rhys was even still hard. Maybe that was just how fucked in the head he was. Maybe that was just what Jack did to him – turned him into a fool. He arched his back and white noise crackled loudly in his ears.

 _Calm down_ , he told himself firmly. _You can always try again. Think of a better plan. Tomorrow. The day after. Next time._

There was almost relief in it. It could go on. On and on and on and on forever. An infinity of fear and bliss. His body would stay in orbit around Helios until the universe itself died out.

 _No,_ he thought sharply. _This ends tonight. Think of a way._

Jack bit Rhys’ neck. Rhys dug his fingers into Jack’s back.

 _The receptionist’s desk_ , he remembered as Jack thrust into him. _There’s a control for the office’s security in it. It’s how she buzzed me in, both times. I can hack into it from there._

He closed his eyes and pressed his face into Jack’s shoulder, biting back a whimper of – he didn’t know what.

“C’mon, babe, you know how much I like seeing you,” Jack murmured, gently tugging at his hair.

Rhys looked up at him dazedly. He must have been an absolute mess. Jack hummed and pressed kisses to his face, dotting them here and there with tenderness.

“Next time I’ll wear fishnets,” Rhys heard himself saying.

“Yeah?” Jack asked with a grin.

“Yeah,” Rhys said, unable to stop. “I’ll even give you a blowjob.”

“You really do know how to sweet talk a guy,” Jack laughed.

“Next time,” Rhys said again, because he couldn’t say goodbye.

*

Rhys pretended to be drowsy as they curled together under the covers, but he’d never been more awake in his life. His skin was filled with pins and needles. He stared up at the ceiling and counted the seconds as Jack’s breathing slowly evened out. How long could he wait like this? There wasn’t a point. He wasn’t even enjoying it anymore. He wasn’t even present.

“Fuck,” Rhys forced out, and sat up in bed.

“What is it?” came Jack’s sleepy mumble. “What’s wrong?”

“I think I left a data drive with some reports for Dr. Headland down in the hub,” Rhys lied. He swung his legs around and started to get up.

“So what?” Jack huffed, looping an arm around Rhys’ waist. “Get back in bed.”

“He’ll kill me if I lose those,” Rhys said. He didn’t have to fake his nerves. “He might fail me for my internship.”

“It’ll still be there in the morning.”

“Not if a cleaning bot gets it,” Rhys argued. “Listen, it’s fine, go back to sleep. I’ll just go down there really fast and look for it.”

“Ugh, fine,” Jack said, and let him go, rolling back over into his pillow. A moment later he was propping himself up onto his elbows. “Wait, hang on, you’ll need a way to get back in.” He reached over to press his palm to the bedside table. The drawer slid open and he fished out his ID card, waving it toward Rhys. “Here, use this or you’ll be vaporized.”

Rhys froze.

“Jack. You can’t just hand me this.”

“Last time I checked I can do whatever the hell I want. Now take it and shut up. I want to go back to sleep. Hurry up and get your stupid drive before your spot gets cold.”

Rhys took the ID card. It wavered slightly in his hand. That was him shaking, he realized. His whole body was trembling minutely. Jack’s smirking face stared back up at him from the card’s glossy front. Abruptly, he wanted to throw it across the room. Instead, he curled his fist closed until the edges of the plastic bit into his palm.

“I’ll be right back,” he lied numbly.

Jack hummed in acknowledgement, already halfway back to sleep.

Out in the hallway, Rhys found Butt Stallion standing in the large archway that led out into the living room. It hadn’t been there when Rhys and Jack had moved to the bedroom. It stared at him with unblinking eyes, utterly still, for all the world nothing more than a gaudy statue. Rhys’ skin crawled. He felt he was being judged.

“Shut up,” Rhys hissed to it as he passed. “What do you know?”

He took the elevator down to the hub and found it still brightly lit despite the late (or early) hour. There were a few people around – men and women with dark bags under their eyes nursing large cups of coffee – but nobody paid him much mind as he crossed to the large elevator that went up to Jack’s office. Overwork and loss of sleep were probably common for Hyperion employees.

The reception area of Jack’s office was empty though, not even a stray loader bot hanging around to clean. Rhys’ boots clicked and echoed as he walked down the long hall. He came to a stop in front of the closed double doors and paused, Jack’s ID card already raised halfway. Then he swiped it across the reader, the doors slid open, and Rhys went inside.

Somehow the room felt smaller without Jack in it. Maybe it was just that everything felt like it was closing in on Rhys now. Maybe not. He was inclined to believe that it was Jack, that he had an aura of largess about him that he granted (briefly) to everything he touched. People often thought of him as a force of destruction. So did Rhys, truth be told. But Jack could build anything he wanted, when he was in the mood. With a thought, he could make you into something you weren’t. Something better. Something you could become.

Rhys mounted the steps and walked around to the other side of the desk. He pressed a button and a holo-screen and keyboard popped up. So did a password box. A cursor blinked innocently, awaiting input.

Rhys watched it for a long minute, until he could almost hear it like a drumbeat in his ears.

Jack’s encryptions would be difficult to break. Nearly impossible, probably. Part of him itched to try, just so he could say he had. Would he win? Would he lose? It almost didn’t matter.

But there was another curious part of him that looked at the screen and saw it the same way he saw the broken skin of Jack’s face, vulnerable and bare. He wondered if this was what being a surgeon was like. It was a bizarre thought, but the image swam and steadied and he realized that, somehow, he was standing with his hand stuck deep in Jack’s chest, fingers threatening to squeeze around his heart. To crush.

He could feel the pulse. He knew that pulse. It was strange, how well he knew it.

‘Angel,’ he typed.

The computer’s files opened. A flood of information came spilling out.

Out of the corner of Rhys’ eye, he suddenly saw Angel’s photo sitting on the desk, her small face beaming up at him. He stared at it, wondered distantly what she would think of all this, whether she would cheer him or condemn him. He wondered where she was. What she was doing. Whether she was okay. He hoped that she was.

Someone in this universe deserved to have a happy ending.

But it wasn’t Rhys.

He reached out and placed Jack’s ID card on the desk in front of her.

Then he walked away.

There was a strange serenity to it. It wasn’t as frightening as he thought it ought to be. His heartbeat was steady as he headed toward the shuttle bay.

Unlike the hub, the bay still had a fair number of people in it, coming and going from the various, far-flung reaches of the universe. Rhys approached the ticket counter and asked when the next shuttle to Opportunity would be. The clerk – a young, bored-looking woman who was chewing bubblegum – did a double take.

“Unexpected red eye to Pandora, huh?” she asked. “Must be important.”

“Life or death,” Rhys agreed dully.

The clerk eyed him, snapped her bubblegum, and then shrugged.

“Better you than me,” she said. “You’re just in time. Next shuttle leaves in ten minutes.”

She took Rhys’ ID card and drained his account of all the station credits he had left.

In the shuttle, safely strapped into his window seat, Rhys picked up one of the inflight magazines and flipped through it. There were a lot of pictures of Jack – posing in Opportunity, pointing guns at hideous, sneering bandits, walking away from explosions without looking at them. There was one printed on the very back page, just a simple portrait under an ad for Handsome Jack Hair Gel, a large block of text that read:

‘NOT EVERYONE CAN BE GREAT, BUT FOR FORTY HELIOS CREDITS, YOU CAN AT LEAST BE GOOD LOOKING!’

Rhys placed his thumb over the word ‘LOOKING.’

Jack’s masked face winked up at him.

Rhys ripped the cover off the back of the magazine, folded it into a small square, and tucked it into his pocket. As the shuttle landed in Opportunity and Rhys disembarked toward the trainline that would take him somewhere, anywhere else, it occurred to him that that was all he had.

He had dumped his ECHO in the shuttle trash. He had disconnected his eye and arm from the ECHOnet to prevent a trace. He had no money. He had no weapon. He had no friends. He had no valuable secret data. He did not have Handsome Jack. All he had was the shirt on his back and a magazine page that grew more wrinkled with every step he took.

He took a deep breath of Pandoran air. It smelled and tasted funny.

 _I’ll probably die down here_ , Rhys thought bleakly.

But it was still somehow better than spending another moment in his cubicle at Tediore. It had all, in the end, been better than that.

*

Pandora sucked pretty much as badly as Rhys had expected it would.

The scenery was beige and rocky, one mile of arid wasteland nearly indistinguishable from the next. The locals were inhospitable in every way a person could be, with some new ways that seemed to have been invented just for Pandora. A woman wearing patched and worn Dahl fatigues stopped as Rhys passed her on the street and loudly declared, “Fresh meat!” She sounded gleeful.

It was also unbearably hot and dry. Rhys became quickly, acutely aware that the last thing he’d eaten had been a handful of popcorn, hours ago, and that he’d been too stressed out to eat the whole day previous. With the sun beating down on his bare head, it seemed like ‘dehydration’ was steadily climbing toward the top of the list of ‘Things Likely to Kill Rhys.’ It was a long list.

He’d ended up taking the train from Opportunity to T-Bone Junction, because that was where the next train happened to be headed. From there, he decided to hitchhike to New Haven, which wasn’t on the rail system.

New Haven was the largest non-Hyperion settlement on Pandora and one of the only places on the whole planet that Jack hadn’t dug his claws into yet, thanks to the presence of Lilith and the other vault hunters. Heading there almost sounded like a plan, except that any reasonableness in this decision was just a lucky byproduct of pure whim. What happened was, Rhys was standing in the station at T-Bone Junction when he saw a poster advertising _Moxxxi’s_.

A slim, busty woman in full clown makeup pouted down at Rhys, lips pursed into a kiss, one eye closed in a wink. He could practically hear the sound of her tiny dress creaking as it strained to contain her breasts. That, he vaguely registered, was one of Jack’s exes. And she apparently ran a bar.

 _Well, I could definitely use a drink_ , he thought. _And also someone to bitch about Jack with. Could be therapeutic._

Unfortunately, Rhys’ ‘plan’ fell apart almost as quickly as it came together. He caught a ride with a group of rough looking men who hadn’t pointed weapons at him, which he figured was probably the best he could hope for, but a few hours out their non-threatening demeanor shifted when one of them placed a four-fingered hand on Rhys’ thigh. He decided to cut his losses and get out at the next stop.

The next stop turned out to be The World’s Largest Bullet, a roadside attraction – in as much as there could be said to be a ‘road’ or ‘attraction.’ It looked to Rhys like an oversized aluminum silo with lights strung up to it. At least it cast a shadow big enough to keep the cluster of buildings at its base cool, which was good enough for the moment.

The amenities at this pitstop were limited to an outhouse, a couple of vending machines, and a hut which may have once offered tours but which was now abandoned. There were also some lean-tos and shipping containers with more rough men hanging around, drinking beers and cleaning weapons and staring at Rhys with open interest.

Actually, it kind of looked like a bandit camp with a billboard out front.

Actually, this was probably, pretty certainly, almost definitely a bandit camp with a billboard out front.

That hadn’t been in the brochure.

Rhys squared his shoulders and walked up to the vending machines. One was a standard ammo vendor, the ground around it covered with scattered bullet casings and cigarette butts. The other looked like a soda machine, but it was empty. Rhys stared past his faint reflection in the cracked glass at the empty coils and felt something like despair. He bent down to open the flap at the bottom, just in case some higher power was feeling particularly merciful at that moment. There were no cans down there either.

When he straightened up, it was to find that three of the bandits had gathered on the other side of the ammo vendor, blocking his exit.

“Oh, uh, hi,” Rhys said, laughing nervously. “You guys here to see the bullet, too? Wow. It sure is. Large.”

The biggest bandit, the one on the left, crossed his arms, causing his bare muscles to ripple in what was possibly the most efficient and expressive threat Rhys had ever witnessed.

“I don’t have any money,” Rhys said quickly. “Like, none. Honestly, swear to whatever you want me to, all I have are my clothes, my shoes, and a page I tore out of a magazine.”

The bandits continued staring. The big one rolled his neck. Rhys bent down and took off his boots. His striped socks stared sadly up at him and seemed to instantly become coated in a thick layer of dust and dirt.

“What the hell is a piece of Hyperion shit like you doing out here, anyway?” one of the smaller bandits asked in a nasally voice as he took the boots from Rhys’ hands. He was wearing a thick rag over his head and mouth, probably to keep out the dust.

“Oh, I’m not –” Rhys began, and then stopped himself. The semantic differences between Hyperion and Tediore and whatever Rhys was at this point were probably lost on gentlemen such as these. He cleared his throat. “Relationship issues.”

“No shit?” the other smaller bandit – and really, they were only small compared to the enormous muscle-bound bandit; next to Rhys they were still pretty large – asked, a hint of sympathy in his voice. “Your girl try to have you killed or something?”

“Uh, close enough,” Rhys said.

“Man, that happened to my cousin Dino,” the nasally bandit said. “His girlfriend paid a guy to shoot his kneecaps out and leave ‘im for the skags.”

“Wow, that’s awful,” Rhys said. “I’m sorry.”

“Naw, she’s my girlfriend now,” the nasally bandit said dismissively. He examined Rhys’ shoes for a moment. “You’ve got really big feet.”

“You know, break ups are hard,” the other small bandit said, “but every failed relationship is an opportunity to learn something new about yourself. Someday all the things that haven’t worked out in your life will be the foundations on which you’ve built your happiness.”

Rhys stared at him.

“Love sucks,” the big bandit grunted wisely.

Rhys opened his mouth – to say what, he wasn’t entirely sure – but was cut off by the sound of a huge, growing roar followed by an echoing crack that shook the ground and had him whirling to find its source. The bandits’ heads all snapped toward it as well. The smaller bandit whose face Rhys could see looked shocked. The big one looked worried.

“ _A moonshot_?” the nasally bandit yelped. “Why the hell is Hyperion sending moonshots out into the sunken fucking sea? There’s nothing out here except rakk shit and rocks!”

They drew their guns and started running toward the encampment’s high, barbed-wired wall, forgetting about Rhys completely. Rhys remained behind, frozen.

“It’s a fine day,” the ammo vendor’s deep voice declared cheerily from beside him, “full of opportunity!”

Pandora’s sun beat down on him with force.

The bandits started yelling, waving their arms, calling out to each other and gathering near the entrance of the camp and at the top of the wall. There was a car headed this way, they yelled. A single vehicle, coming in fast.

A bead of sweat dripped down the back of Rhys’ neck and into the cool shadow of his shirt collar, toward his spine. He shivered.

Then there was an explosion, and part of the wall came flying inward, sending bandits and debris tumbling through the air. There were cries of pain as they collided with the sides of the huts and shipping containers. One bandit went tumbling into the firepit and screamed as his torso met the burning embers.

Gunshots rang out from all sides, from the top of the wall and inside the camp as the bandits fired through the dust-filled hole. One of the bandits up on his perch was struck in the forehead and his body jerked backward, then fell, like a child’s doll, to the ground far below. The same happened to another.

“Grenade out!” one of the bandits yelled, and lobbed one hard.

There was a pause, and then a new explosion, followed by a second, larger one that sent a dark billowing cloud of smoke up into the thin blue sky. The bandits pressed closer, encouraged by this destruction, only to scramble back seconds later as a small object came bouncing back toward them. Their attempts to flee were cut off as the grenade sucked the closest gunmen toward it before bursting with a loud, fiery flash.

Rhys threw his arms up over his eyes to shield them from the light and the wave of hot air that pulsed through the camp. When he looked again, the makeshift buildings closest to the blast had caught fire and the flames were spreading. A barrel of gasoline burst like a cannon, and a hot plume of pure fire roared out of it, furious and unforgiving.

The bandit’s screams were nearly lost in the sound of the crackling flames and the hail of bullets. The ground was littered with bodies and rubble. Rhys watched as more bodies were hit by some unseen force and made to crumple, like an angry god had merely reached out and tapped them with his finger.

Tap. Tap. Tap. The bandits fell.

Rhys should have run. His brain was screaming at him to just turn and book it – to what, he didn’t know. Out into the desert to the skags. Toward the canyons with the spiderants and rakk. Just to the nearest hiding place – an overturned billboard, an outcropping of rock.

But there was something in him that held him fast. It kept him rooted deep into the dirt. Maybe he didn’t want to delay the inevitable. Maybe he didn’t want his last minutes to consist of running, pathetic and scared. Maybe he just wanted to stay and see the inferno. It was his, after all.

Above him, the overhang covering the vending machines flapped noisily in the artificial breeze, battered about in the wake of the repeated explosions. It was like a blood-colored flag. A marker.

The fire was raging uncontrollably now. It had spread to almost everything that could catch. Rhys watched as the big bandit who had threatened him threw himself at the opening in the wall. He fell back at once, buckled lifelessly to his knees, and Handsome Jack emerged like a vengeful demon out of the hole he had punched in the bandit camp’s defenses.

He was alone. He had a single pistol in his hand and a couple of grenades hanging from his belt.

Rhys wondered why Jack bothered having an army at all.

Jack looked around the camp for a second before his gaze landed on Rhys. It was too far, the air thick with smoke and heat mirage that distorted his expression, but Rhys didn’t need to see it to feel the brunt force of it like a punch. Jack took a step in his direction.

He was waylaid by one of the bandits, throwing himself at Jack with a raised buzz ax and a war cry. The cry curdled and warped into pain as Jack shot him in the face, blowing one cheek out and turning his jaw into shards. Another bandit shot at him from barely a foot away. Rhys gasped, but the bullets snapped and sizzled impotently against the blue barrier of a shield. Jack shot the bandit in the throat.

Two more appeared from behind overturned scrap metal they’d been using as cover, their submachine guns rattling like thunder, throwing up dust at Jack’s feet and sending blue static flying from his shield’s invisible barrier. He dispatched the first as quickly as he had the others, but only shot the second in the arm. Then the other arm, forcing him to drop his gun. Then one leg, crippling him, then the other, forcing him to his knees. Then Jack was emptying the pistol into his stomach, until the gun was empty, and death was mercy.

There wasn’t a bandit left alive in the whole camp. There was nothing but the fire, and Jack.

He resumed his progress toward Rhys, reloading his pistol with mercenary efficiency as he walked, not even needing to look at the gun as he did so. With deft fingers, he ejected the spent clip into the dirt and replaced it with a click. Rhys felt a sudden stab of empathy for Amy, whose last moments had been just like this – watching the man she loved bare down on her with killing intent. 

“Do you know what the first thing I thought was?” Jack asked as he stalked toward Rhys, the blood spatter stark against his pale mask. “When I woke up and you were gone and someone had accessed my encrypted files? It was that someone had taken you. That you were in trouble. I was so. Goddamn. _Worried_.”

He came to a stop several feet in front of Rhys.

“And then I saw the surveillance tapes.”

Jack raised his gun. Rhys closed his eyes.

“ _Look at me_!” Jack roared.

Rhys opened them again and looked at the pistol, followed the barrel up Jack’s arm to his face. He was snarling, eyes wide with rage, teeth bared. Rhys had never seen someone so angry in his life.

There was a long, tense silence during which nobody spoke. Not far off, one of the lean-tos buckled and crashed into flames, sending sparks flying. Neither turned to look. The universe had narrowed to a single point.

“Nothing to say for yourself, huh?” Jack said at last, voice low but tangled with a shuddering thread of barely restrained violence. “Not even going to beg for your life. That’s fine by me. You’ve done enough talking. And, really, I’d like nothing more than to just shoot you, spit on your corpse, and walk away. Nuke this shithole and be done for good. But unfortunately for both of us, there’s still a couple of things I need to know. Who do you work for?”

“Tediore,” Rhys said at once.

“Tediore,” Jack scoffed. “ _’I want to know how Tediore makes their guns explode_ ,’ huh? You transparent bitch.”

Rhys flinched.

“You’re not even a good liar, are you, Rhys?” Jack asked snidely.

“No,” Rhys agreed.

“Guess that makes me pretty fucking stupid, doesn’t it?” Jack said. “Couldn’t even see through your load of crap. Well, you got me good, _babe_. Congratu-fucking-lations.” He took a deep, steadying breath, as if reminding himself why he hadn’t yet pulled the trigger. Then he demanded, “Did you tell them about Angel?”

Rhys’ lips parted slightly in surprise. He’d never even considered it.

“ _Did you tell them about Angel?_ ” Jack yelled, taking another step forward.

“No!” Rhys cried. “I didn’t…I didn’t tell them anything.”

Jack laughed. It was hollow.

“I know you have no reason to believe me,” Rhys said, “but it’s the truth. You think I came down here to meet someone? You think _this_ was my exit strategy? A bandit camp? Seriously?”

The sad, ramshackle cluster of hovels burned hot and angry on all sides. Sweat and smoke had begun to cling to Rhys’ skin in a thin layer of filth. It felt like filth upon filth.

“You’re going to kill me no matter what I say,” he croaked. “I know that. That’s…well, it’s not fine. It sucks pretty bad. But I’m done lying to you. I never sent them a thing, Jack. But whatever. Whatever. My word’s no good anymore. I’m sure you’ll figure it out for yourself soon enough.”

Jack stared at him, incredulous.

“Tediore would’ve killed for what you had,” Jack said. “Forget Tediore – you could’ve had whatever you wanted from anyone in the universe. Maliwan. Torgue. Fucking _Dahl_. You could’ve had it all. And you expect me to believe you just _threw it away?_ _Just like that?_ ”

“Yeah, I guess so,” Rhys said.

Jack’s finger twitched over the trigger guard.

“So your big plan was – what exactly?” he asked, gesturing broadly around him, as though some hidden cranny of The World’s Largest Bullet might hold the secret next step in Rhys’ nefarious scheme. “Come down here and – and _go native?_ ”

“Calling it a plan is probably overgenerous,” Rhys said.

“Oh? What would you call it, then? _Huh?_ ”

Rhys shrugged, fully, heavily, throwing his arms out to his sides and then letting them fall back to his hips with a thump.

“I’m just a code monkey, Jack,” he said.

He was exhausted and hopeless. He was standing at the end of the road, facing the abyss. He was done, and this was all that was left.

“I’m a nobody who made a mistake and got caught. Tediore told me to steal from you or they would kill me for it. What was I supposed to do? There was no way this ended without you finding out. The only way for me to get out of it alive was to go back to them with something to show for it. But I.” Rhys paused and tried to lick some wetness back into his cracked lips. “I couldn’t do it. Which is…so _fucking_ stupid, by the way. I knew – I _knew_ you would kill me the second you caught on, done deal, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. If not you, then _definitely_ Tediore. It was that or death. And I still couldn’t go through with it.

“So, no, Jack, there is no plan. There’s only me. Me, the biggest moron in the six galaxies –” He threw one hand out toward the World’s Largest Bullet as if to compare their relative size. “– ready to die rather than tell Tediore about whatever super-secret business strategy _bullshit_ you have hidden away, just because I don’t want to, I don’t know. Betray you. Be the –” He choked on the words, and then forced them out. “Be the villain.”

Jack was silent, face unchanged, gun arm steady. But he didn’t pull the trigger, even as the pause stretched on.

“As for why I came down here,” Rhys finally added, “I could only afford this or Elpis and sometimes I get vertigo in zero-g. Plus, you know. World’s Largest Bullet. Had to get that one off the bucket list while I still could.”

Jack exhaled out through his nose. “Always the comedy routine with you, isn’t it?” he said. It was bitter.

“It’s a defense mechanism, I think.”

“You might try one that’s less likely to get you shot in the face,” Jack advised. His hand tensed and eased around the gun’s grip. “What the hell do you even want, Rhys?”

Rhys huffed a laugh that came out as half sob.

“Right now? To not get shot. A drink of water. To stop being so _stupidly_ in love with you.” He shrugged again, only slightly this time, helplessly. “What do you want, Jack?”

For a time, it didn’t seem like Jack was going to respond. Rhys wondered how much longer he had left to live. He wondered who would tell his mom.

Then: “The universe,” Jack said, sounding tired. “A call from my daughter.” He paused. “To stop being so stupidly in love with you.”

Around them, the bandit camp continued to burn.

“Well,” Rhys said. He swallowed and fought back the urge to cry. “I guess we can’t always get what we want.”

Jack stood unmoving for a beat longer, and then his gun arm dropped. He unclipped a canteen from his waist and tossed it in Rhys’ direction. Rhys reached out and fumbled to catch it, barely keeping it from falling in the dust. His mouth was achingly dry, but he didn’t move to drink.

“That’s only two out of three,” he said weakly.

“Gimme a break,” Jack said gruffly. “I’m batting zero over here.”

“The universe isn’t yours yet?”

“Nah.” Jack’s lips quirked into a self-deprecating smile. “There’s still a few stragglers.”

Rhys gave him a small, wavering smile back. Then it fell away.

“I’m sorry,” he said, voice cracking. “I’m so sorry, Jack.”

“Was everything you said to me a lie?” Jack asked.

“No,” was Rhys’ strangled reply. “Practically nothing. I couldn’t lie to save my own life. Obviously.”

“What the hell am I gonna do with you, Rhys?”

“Shoot me, I thought.”

“You really are the biggest moron in the six galaxies,” Jack said, “if you think that is even remotely an option anymore.”

Rhys blinked furiously. It was hard to see all of a sudden. Something warm and wet was running down his cheeks.

Jack holstered his gun. He sighed.

“We should probably get back to Helios,” he said. “Someone has to rescue your ficus. I may have thrown it at a wall.”

Rhys took several stumbling steps forward and threw his arms around Jack. Jack froze, and then relaxed as Rhys buried his face in his neck. Slowly, Jack’s arms wrapped around him in return. A large, warm hand came to rest on one of Rhys’ shaking shoulders.

“Come on, don’t cry,” Jack said into the side of his face. “It’s a plant. I’ll buy you a better one. One that’s carnivorous.”

“It was a graduation present!” Rhys sobbed. “It’s been my best friend for years!”

“You know something, babe?” Jack asked. “Your life kind of sucked before me.”

Rhys couldn’t argue with that.

* 

They picked their way back through the wreckage of the bandit camp toward the exit, Rhys gingerly avoiding stepping on the splayed-out limbs of the fallen. Jack had no such compunctions. He seemed to take delight, actually, in intentionally treading on faces and torsos as he walked.

Rhys finally took a swig from the canteen, only to discover that it contained not water, but straight vodka. He coughed and choked on it and spit most of it into the dirt. Jack reached out a hand and took the canteen back, throwing back his head and taking a long, heartfelt drink. Rhys really couldn’t blame him.

Along the way, Rhys spotted one of his boots in a gap under a shipping container. Another had been flung to the base of the camp’s wall. Jack watched him collect them silently, still not in the mood to remark. 

“How did you find me so fast, anyway?” Rhys asked, tucking them under his arm.

His socks were basically ruined with blood and dust by now. There was no point in scuffing up the hard-to-maintain skagskin any further just to save them.

“The magazines on the shuttles all have anti-theft devices,” Jack said.

Rhys took a second to process that, then ripped the crumpled page out of his pocket. He unfolded it and looked at the back. Sure enough, there was some kind of shiny, metallic film over the barcode.

“That’s ridiculous!” he complained. “It’s a magazine!”

“People kept stealing them!” Jack said in defense. “Couldn’t resist the temptation to try to pocket this face. Guess you know about that, though, huh?”

Rhys flushed in embarrassment, balled the page up in his fist, and tossed it over his shoulder. So much for sentiment.

It turned out that the pillar of black smoke had been a result of Jack’s car exploding. The twisted wreckage of metal was barely recognizable anymore, although it looked like it had probably once been yellow. Jack stood with his hands on his hips, shaking his head in dismay at it, before muttering something about gold-plated hubcaps – really? – and heading toward a nearby metal landing.

There were two parking spots flanking a clunky old console that smelled strongly of skag piss. A sign up above displayed a holographic tire, tilted in motion, kicking up cartoon dust.

“This junk runs off hijacked Hyperion tech,” Jack said, banging a fist down on top of the monitor. “Give me a minute and I can hack into it and get us a car. Now where’s that friggin’ access port…”

“Ah, no, I’ve got it,” Rhys said, activating his ECHOeye and reconnecting it to the ECHOnet.

It’d been a while now since he’d been able to use it to hack, and the feeling of reinstating its scan functions felt like coming home. In only seconds, it had analyzed the console and popped up the results.

 

ANALYSIS COMPLETE

Catch-A-Ride Station

Owner and Operator: Scooter (New Haven)

Function: Vehicle Digistruction

Safety Rating: 2/100

_Driving one of these might get you killed, but walking definitely will. Seatbelts not included._

 

Rhys remotely accessed the console’s data bank and used RHY5-W1NZ.exe to crack through the security program. The console flickered to life.

“CATCH-A-RIIIIIIIIIIDE!” a man’s voice cried from the green display screen.

Jack looked at it, then at Rhys.

“Huh,” he said. “Code monkey, you said?”

“Server maintenance,” Rhys said. “But I got bored.”

Jack grinned.

“Alright, what do you think?” he asked, pulling up the menu. “Turrets? Rocket launchers? I’m kind of feeling the racing stripes, but I could also go for a nice, sleek chrome if that’s more your style.”

“Whatever’s fastest,” Rhys said.

“Racing stripes, it is,” Jack said.

A moment later, a light runner was slowly forming on the metal pad beside them. It was all function, barely more than a chassis with seats and a steering wheel stapled to the front. There were racing stripes, as promised, but they were almost comical in their slap-dash, wiggling journey over the uneven metal exterior. The colors – fire engine red and bright, sky blue – were garish.

“You know, what really cuts me up about this,” Jack said critically, “is that I was almost this kid’s step-father once. Can you imagine? Taste this bad in _my_ family?”

“You have a horse made of diamonds in your living room,” Rhys said.

“What’s your point?” Jack asked.

Rhys rolled his eyes and sank into a seat in the light runner with a sigh of relief. He raised one leg and began putting his boot back on.

“What happened with the shoes?” Jack asked, hopping into the driver’s seat next to him. “Did the clock strike twelve on your way down, Cinderella?”

“Bandits mugged me,” Rhys said glumly.

Jack stared at him for a second, and then began to laugh uproariously. The sound cracked like a whip through the still easing tension, shattering it completely. Jack flung a hand over his face. His skin had turned red with mirth around the edges of his mask.

“What?” Rhys snapped.

“You were on Pandora for all of six hours,” Jack said, “and you managed to end up stranded in a bandit camp in the middle of nowhere without your shoes! How does that _happen?_ ”

“I don’t know!” Rhys said. “How does any of this stuff happen? Corporate espionage, Jack? Mutant acid monsters? I grew up in a suburb! I got into college on a mathletes scholarship! It’s not funny! Stop laughing!”

He tried and failed to repress a smile.

Jack howled with laughter for almost the entire ride back to Opportunity. This maybe explained the number of skags he hit along the way. Then again, that could’ve also just been Jack.

And it wasn’t quite riding off into the sunset – they were still in the middle of Pandora’s painfully long day cycle, and dust came flying through the light runner’s unguarded front into Rhys’ eyes. At one point Jack had to swerve and double back to avoid attracting the attention of some enormous, long-legged, spider-like monster that he called “a drifter” and “a distant relation of yours, probably.” So it wasn’t quite riding off into the sunset.

But it was pretty damn close. 

*

A week later found Rhys camped out on Jack’s couch, browsing the ECHOnet and studiously avoiding eye contact with the frozen Butt Stallion (which he still wasn’t convinced wasn’t some elaborate prank on Jack’s part). It had been an unspoken agreement that Rhys wouldn’t return to the job he was woefully underqualified for and which he hadn’t wanted or enjoyed in the first place. Not that it mattered, because Dr. Headland had vanished mysteriously in the night.

Rhys was fine not knowing whether he had managed to jump ship or if Jack had done something nasty and unspeakable to him. The group chat, however, was rife with speculation on the fate of Dr. Moist and Intern Rhys. Most people seemed to think (or hope) that they had both been airlocked for some unknown offense, the exact nature of which was hotly debated. Rhys figured he’d give them another couple of days to swap conspiracy theories and work themselves into a frenzy before he dropped a “news of my death has been greatly exaggerated” post. In the meantime, he was having fun watching them once more dig their own mortifying graves with rampant shit talking.

He did feel a small twinge of guilt when Benson posted a very nicely-worded memorial post for him (that quickly became the most downvoted post in the history of the group chat), but that guilt eased a bit when Ines posted a picture of the two of them holding hands the very next day.

 _I basically did that_ , Rhys thought smugly. _I mean, to be fair, I definitely got that ball rolling. So you’re welcome, Benson._

Jack, having now heard the whole story from start to finish, seemed to find the whole catastrophe retrospectively hilarious. Throughout the day he would sometimes stop and stand in front of Rhys, shaking his head in amusement as if suddenly recalling a funny joke that Rhys had told. He was also currently in the midst of some kind of scheme to feed Tediore false information in Rhys’ name in order to pump them for cash and future humiliation. Rhys wasn’t too concerned with the details.

In general, he wasn’t much concerned at all. He was, in that comfortable homey way that so few people seemed to ever achieve, happy. A sturdy happy. A happy that could maybe last.

Rhys sat on Jack’s couch and looked out at Elpis and space with a small smile on his face. For once, it didn’t look like a threatening, deadly maw of nothingness, but the future stretching out before him, infinite in its potential, and filled with stars.

A quiet pinging sound broke him from his thoughts. 

It was an ECHO call, and not from his parents, whom he had just sent a long, rambling message that amounted to, “Everything’s fine; please don’t try to sue anyone about it.” The signal looked like it was coming from Pandora, which was weird. Hesitantly, he answered, and blinked in surprise when he recognized the caller from the file on Jack’s known associates that Tediore had given him. It was Nisha Kadam, the Bandit Killer and Sheriff of Lynchwood.

“Uh, if you’re looking for Jack –” Rhys started.

“If I wanted to talk to Jack, I would’ve called him,” Nisha said. “I just wanted to see what kind of moron shacked up with that asshole. Kind of skinny, aren’t you?”

“…Okay,” Rhys said slowly, because he didn’t want to piss off a woman whose name had the word ‘killer’ in it.

“You know, the other day,” Nisha went on, “he called me, as if we’re friends or something –”

 _Aren’t you?_ Rhys wondered.

“– all panicky about having _feelings_. Christ, it was embarrassing. _Feelings. Jack._ If I ever have to go through that again, I might vomit.”

Rhys blinked. “Are you…is this a shovel talk?”

Nisha looked briefly surprised and then wryly amused. “God, no. Can you imagine? Actually, if you break his heart and make him cry real life tears, I would find that extremely funny. Do that.”

“I don’t know that he has functioning tear ducts?”

“Nah, I kneed him in the balls once; he definitely shed a couple then,” she dismissed. “Although, at this point to see him cry you’d probably have to steal his hard drive and sell it to his competitors or something.”

“He told you about that?”

“…What?”

“What?” Rhys cleared his throat. “Go back to what you were saying about feelings.”

Nisha squinted at him. “Right. Well, only a pussy is afraid of his own feelings, Rhys. You’re dating a pussy. Just passing the message along. He’s a total pussy.”

Then she hung up. So ended the strangest call of Rhys’ life. He sat for a moment, then craned his neck toward Jack’s study.

“Your friend Nisha just called to tell me you’re a pussy!” he yelled.

There was a thud and a muffled string of curses.

“That bitch is not my friend!” Jack yelled back.

Rhys grinned to himself. As long as they had Jack to bully, he thought he and Nisha would get along just fine. Perhaps sensing this thought, the man himself came out into the living room, hands on his hips and eyes narrowed suspiciously.

“What the hell is Nisha doing calling you, anyway?” he asked. “How did she even get your number?”

“I dunno,” Rhys said. “Phonebook?”

“Oh, ha ha, ‘phonebook,’ he says, very funny.”

Jack sank down next to Rhys and threw an arm over the back of the couch. Rhys shifted and leaned into his side.

“You know,” Jack started slowly, which was generally a bad sign, “we’ve had a lot of conversations about you sucking my dick, but it hasn’t actually happened yet.”

Rhys raised an unimpressed eyebrow at him.

“All I’m saying is, you did just run off to Pandora and cause a lot of blood, sweat, and tears making me chase you,” Jack went on. “And, frankly, I think –”

“Are you trying to guilt trip me into giving you head?” Rhys asked. “Because that’s what it sounds like you’re doing.”

“I’m not trying to _guilt_ you, oh my god, you make it sound so evil,” Jack said. “I just want to know what it’s gonna take for me to get a blowjob around here.”

“It’ll take you shutting up, for starters,” Rhys said.

“Babe, if I had that mouth around me, there wouldn’t be a word in the universe left worth saying,” Jack promised.

Rhys’ lips quirked despite himself. It was probably an unrealistic expectation, but it might be nice to see Jack trying to stay quiet. Hot, even. He felt the stirrings of genuine interest and placed a hand on Jack’s chest, pushing him back into the cushions.

“Hell yeah,” Jack said.

“Strike one,” Rhys said.

Jack made a zipping motion with his fingers against his lips.

Rhys sank off the couch to his knees and pushed Jack’s thighs apart with his hands. He placed a kiss against the inside of one, and then the other. He leaned forward, stopping with his face inches above Jack’s groin. When he looked up, Jack’s eyes had dilated into hot coals. Maintaining eye contact, Rhys leaned the rest of the way in and pressed an open-mouthed kiss to Jack’s still-clothed crotch.

“Mph,” Jack said.

Rhys smirked.

Jack wasn’t fully hard yet when Rhys pulled him free, but he was getting there. Rhys helped him along with his flesh hand, running his thumb slowly along one thick vein, teasing but firm. He pressed a small kiss to the middle of Jack’s shaft, then one further up. Finally, he kissed him almost on the very tip of his cock, millimeters from his slit. Then he opened his mouth, just a small amount, and licked. He felt Jack’s cock twitch.

With his cybernetic hand, Rhys tucked a loose strand of hair back behind his ear. His flesh hand had fallen to massage Jack’s balls. He pressed the flat of his tongue to the underside of Jack’s head, dragged it up, and sucked the tip of Jack’s cock into his mouth. There was a movement up above him. When he glanced at Jack, he had the meat of one hand between his teeth, and he was biting hard.

Rhys preened silently as he began to bob his head, massaging Jack with his tongue with gentle, twisting strokes. He hummed lowly and tasted precum. He continued like that for a few beats, working up a rhythm, never taking more than a few inches of Jack into his mouth. Then, a wicked heat zipping up his spine, he pressed in toward Jack’s dark curls slowly, and swallowed him up to the root. 

“Christ, I give, I give!” Jack burst out suddenly, throwing his head back. “You win, babe! Take it all! My corporate secrets are yours! Tell Tediore it was mission: success! Just fuckin’ – Rhys, babe, _why_ are you stopping?”

Rhys sat back on his haunches and glared up at him. “You are such an asshole.”

Jack scoffed and carded his fingers through Rhys’ hair, tugging him gently back in. His smile was fond. “Don’t pretend you don’t love it,” he said.

“Yeah,” Rhys sighed heavily, rolling his eyes. “I guess I do.”

And, like a fool, he totally did.

**END**

 

 

 

 

 

 

( **Bonus:**

“Hey Nisha, long time no chat, how’s Bandit Town?”

“Filled with bandits. What do you want, Jack?”

“So I might have a little problem up here.”

“Yeah? Need me and the boys to pay a visit?” Nisha asked, eagerly fingering the grip on one of her twin pistols.

“No no no nooooo, I was just, y’know.” Jack cleared his throat. “Hypothetically speaking, if you started to like someone – and I know this is a stretch for a heartless cunt like you to imagine, so bear with me – but if you did and you were like, wow! I’d probably like him even if he were butt fuckin’ ugly! I mean, _probably_ , and he’s super, super not, just to clarify, and this is still a hypothetical –”

“Jack,” Nisha interrupted. “Don’t ever call me again.”

“Yeah, okay,” Jack sighed. “I’ll see you next month for poker. Don’t forget it’s your turn to bring the booze.”

“Not anymore it’s not,” Nisha said, and hung up.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “It’s in our moments of DECISION that DESTINY is shaped.” INSPIRED~!
> 
> (title is taken from FOOLS by troye sivan)
> 
> it feels weird that this is complete, but i also feel like i could write another solid 45k of meta. i’ll spare you, lol.
> 
> thank you for reading all the way to the end! :) please let me know what you thought.
> 
> ETA: @PukaoArt drew [[this gorgeous rendition]](https://twitter.com/PukaoArt/status/1116417338641747968) of the scene at the world's largest bullet and now i'm crying in the club. please go look at it and all his beautiful art! thank you so much!!! <3 <3 <3
> 
> further ETA: i am now on twitter at [[@ineffmoth]](https://twitter.com/ineffmoth). please feel free to come interact with me there!


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